Summer 2020 Archive
Hybrid Fiction
One World, Or None
By Allison Whittenberg
Mama, how come you never told me about
the A-bomb?
Were we too busy
running from the men
with pillowcases and sheets
to duck and cover?
How come there’s never
any of us in those
public service announcements?
They claim we can’t get
a suntan, but are we also
immune to gamma rays?
Is it like flesh colored
crayons, something that
was created without
us in mind?
There weren’t
whites only signs
on the air raid shelters
so I guess
they would
have
cracked
open
the door,
if we knocked
hard enough,
right?
We would have been
one
big,
at last,
happy family,
at the end of the world,
wouldn’t we?
By Allison Whittenberg
Mama, how come you never told me about
the A-bomb?
Were we too busy
running from the men
with pillowcases and sheets
to duck and cover?
How come there’s never
any of us in those
public service announcements?
They claim we can’t get
a suntan, but are we also
immune to gamma rays?
Is it like flesh colored
crayons, something that
was created without
us in mind?
There weren’t
whites only signs
on the air raid shelters
so I guess
they would
have
cracked
open
the door,
if we knocked
hard enough,
right?
We would have been
one
big,
at last,
happy family,
at the end of the world,
wouldn’t we?
