I dreamt I was walking across the high plains,
through the husk of a small American town.

The air was hazy
with distant smoke. The sun was high in a

muted, cloudless sky. The heat radiated
through my temples. I was parched, older, leathery, searching.

I came upon
a rusted-out school bus on the side of a dirt road

I walked in. The seats had been removed
from the bus. Along the left side lay

a long row of bedridden, elderly adults, comatose and naked,
each one receiving the slow drip of a tincture into the mouth:

clear nectar oozing from a carnivorous plant
hanging from the bus’s ceiling.

There were small children, also naked,
standing there in the bus. Their eyes

were covered with dark patches. As I turned
to leave, walking back down toward the road,

one of the children tugged on my leg. I turned
to address the child, our faces now nearly meeting,

and I saw that her eyes were not covered,
but removed. Two spindly black voids hung there

instead. “It's okay,” the child said to me.
“You don't need to be afraid.”

*      *      *

I continued down the road, the air
murky, salty, boiling, deadly.

A neon billboard with an American flag waving
shone off in the distance.

behind it loomed a giant radio tower,
hard at work transmitting,

but I knew that its broadcasts
were never meant for me to begin with.