by Emma Lagno
wink their gold heads and smooth mouthless
faces and flat fingerless hands. On the shelves,
softback books on baseball and the wilderness
crackle. They say how to be a boy
when the plane goes down in the woods.
How to hold a hatchet. How to swing a bat.
It’s the inside of a basketball in here.
The air brrrings and smells like rubber
and is orange and is black. It’s the plastic
Halloween tub under the bed. The flattened
werewolf mask and the tarantulas.
On the desk, the home computer sleeps
for winter, noiseless. The small digital
football linemen sleeping too.
The windows eject holographic
discs onto your bed, where I have
the most spelled, dreamless
midday deaths. Then wake up
on Saturday, ghosts
from the sitcom
laughing.
Emma Lagno is a writer from upstate New York.
January House Literary Journal 
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