Stefan Sullivan

You Had a Dream

If a rosebud breaks the earthen floor, and
becomes a stem, but nothing more,
we mourn the rose that might have been.
We grieve for nature's still-born stem.

But the heads that droop
on the Beltway outer loop?
Heads without a home
shackled to their pinging phones?

Drooping heads wilted stems,

where is our mourning then?

These sorry stems

we rubberneck

as roadside wrecks,

but oddly

never grieve.

Stefan Sullivan is the author of a novel set in 1990s Siberia (Die Andere Bibliothek/Berlin), and Marx for a Post-Communist Era (Routledge/London). His songs and lyrics have featured on WNYU FM CITYWIDE. He lives in Washington DC.