By Lisa Timpf
"was the spider radioactive, Mommy?"—
her son Nate's small voice, piping—
"is that why Little Miss Muffet ran away?"
she closes the volume of nursery rhymes
handed down from her mother
the book she saved from the wood stove
that awful winter
and her gaze sweeps across the counter
where the handheld Geiger apparatus
rests silent for now
no home should be without one
the ads all say
cheerfully, as if that were
something to be celebrated
that night, she dreams of a cat
fiddling while the world burns
under a full moon
bereft of cows or dreams