Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction.  A native of Boise, Idaho, his work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Unstamatic, Door Is A Jar Magazine, Maudlin House, and Ariel Chart. Mir-Yashar lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.

Recess Dreams, 2001

once, at recess, eighth grade, I reprised the weight of swings
feet pumping, higher, higher, while others took to fields
soccer balls dreamed I was a mistake. Not a fourteen-year old
 sun smiled, cerulean endlessness over rooftops, even though
it was September. 2001 was the so-called realism
instead, I dreamed I was
a child out of time, swinging higher, above the school fields
which held soccer balls and trailers for classrooms
 
foreign to a boy from Victorian era, a stately, lovingly stern
word transplanted in computers by freak accident
dwelling among terrorists and cars without grace and verve
instead of elegant bowler hats and carriage expanding
railroads and neo-Gothic glory, curved Victorian grandeur
 (the racism erased in my mind).
With each pump of legs,
on I dreamt, sky encouraging cerulean smiles
 
of a long-lost mother rushing through time. To save me
(never mind the Gilded Age of inequality)
 
I swung higher on swings to bring me back
from bearded terror to lilting voices,
love, darling, terms of endearment
 (never mind the lack of women’s suffrage and motherly misery).
while I clung to my swing, throne carrying me
up into visions
she wept
like the perfect Romantic era, tears absurdly idiotic
 
but beautiful drowning the terrorists
(never mind Alexander Ulyanov, who tried to blow up Alexander III)
 
leading me into constricted liberation
of arms and motherly edicts
in Edison films of grainy, ordered black and white
not cold grays and charcoals. Human nature
I dreamed of this, while students took to games of
soccer, real eighth grade things
even when time called me
down, legs surrendering to the sand and the boundaries
 
of school buildings, dreamed of being whisked away
while the towers burned
and my
dream mother rushed to carry me
back before bombs were so common
(assassination of Alexander II, whitewashed)
carry me into a world where not even breakfast
could be consumed without stilted protection
 
the next time I got on the swings