polvo magazine

Sleep is an unfenced country,

but the roads to it are closed.

The train was also late, and full of garlic eaters

and children yelling into cell phones,

and the man in the next seat, snoring loudly.

Sleep requires no passport,

but you must be

near dead

to get there.

Animals, on the other hand, sleep when they want to.

In the middle of the day.

On the rug,

in their wings,

on their feet.

Why must we have fences and trains,

and still fail to reach the natural state?

Are we demented?

To take sleeping pills, when God never had any plan about this.

By Alice Van Buren