Stuffed children, eat merrily

Rainbow-clad, troughs,

Everlasting spangle.

Singing, singing, singing.

If houses were of bubble gum,

Streets of sweetened salts,

Oceans filled with cherry pop,

Lakes of chocolate malt,

Then Sally Saunders' pillow-based

Allergy, fitted beyond feather tickles

To shapes, stripes, and mass' collective softness

Might source, again, her nose to new neighbors.

Marshmallows, I assume,

The rocking horse plus jungle fowl.

Deciduous dancers in the breeze,

Would petrify, silenced, at sugary hours.

Sniffling, sad, Sally yearned,

Yielded and acquiesced

To rest her head on something better.

She screamed for a bolster.

Plentiful dead poultry,

Patient to a number

Basking patent leather sunshine

When half a cork crumbs chocolate crumb.

Common folk, those ginger bread,

Could have no teeth to chew

If if happened that they did,

Cavities all through!

Mightily miffed, Sally supposed

Sleepy sacks meant someone merited

Histamine-free drifty days;

Darlings needed in other ways.

Changes come and children know,

Oracles rise as soothsayers go

Truth reflects what

Wisdom should.

Sally sullied many stores pursuing dreams of more

Stones, cements, ornaments to cushion her sweet head

Turtle shells and cocker bells made mad our little girl.

The fruit's rotten 'neath the sheet, but her appetite's been thrilled.

KJ Hannah Greenberg's poem To Be a Midlist Author appeared here in March 2011.