What Are We Doing Here

Sara Michas-Martin

The mother does not believe the child it is 5 a.m. why would a lizard be in his room must have crawled from the pages of a book she’s a dropped key on a sidewalk also door that requires unlocking let her sleep let her but he’s not joking and she’s not joking wonder feels like a chore a stumbling toward what is indeed a salamander firetruck red oh my god black spots glossy among trains everything’s fine tick tock inside the carpeted homes of giants

Sara Michas-Martin is a Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford and author of Gray Matter, winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize. Recent poems and essays can be found in the American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, New England Review, Los Angeles Review and on Terrain.org.