I packed my bags
and left my home,
and when I got to the edge,
I did what everyone does
and stepped off into the great
blue Yawn, which I was surprised to find
(though I shouldn’t have been)
never stops yawning, so
now I never stop yawning,
being as much as I am a part of it
Every morning, I eat one
pink donut, and every night
before bed I take a couple
of the ones and zeroes
my doctor prescribed for me—
both for the pains I get
in all the wet weather, and
also to help me stop yawning
long enough to fall asleep and dream
that I am a loveable radish farmer
named Scorch      With my wife
Maudine, and my two bright children,
one named Scooter and the other Croissant,
we live a clean, but dirty life in the dirt
with so many rainbow radishes
that sometimes, even we, a family
of radish farmers, don’t know how
to use them all up        Fortunately,
we have neighbors, for instance the Bakers,
who are bakers, and the Butchers,
who make bikes        We trade
our radishes to the Bakers for baguettes
and to the Butchers for a new kickstand
In fact, we trade our radishes for everything
we need      It’s an enormously good life,
free from bears and bullies and cops
And no one yawns ever, because
no one’s ever tired      Plenty of oxygen
flows to our brains       We take big huge gulps
regularly, as much as we can breathe
All the air is pure and free        But eventually
the dream ends, of course, or the dream
blinks instantly away, and I wake up yawning
with a whole lot missing       I eat
my one pink donut and think about my family—
not the radish one, the real one I left
for this life in the Yawn         Cold and metallic
in the chill autumn rain, I yawn along with it
to the detriment of something,
though for the life of me lately,
I can’t remember what

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Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently Everything Breaking/for Good (2019) and The Obliterations (2019). A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he plays in the band NEVERNEW and teaches at both the Art Academy of Cincinnati and in the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

read next: Matt Hart, “A Comforting Return“

“Wilder Bluer Yonder” appeared in TLR: Contents May Shift (Summer, 2020)