This would be ’92.

Everyone was drinking ten glasses of water a day,

not yet hip to the hypnotremia scare.

There was the New Austerity

that wasn’t much different

from the Old Austerity.

Suddenly, we don’t eat out.

We don’t “grab something” “on the road.”

There’s all this stuff to do over and over,

like buying lunchmeat.

Our backs hurt.

We’re always writing stuff down.

There are enough Q-Tips in this house

to last us a year.

Now, steering past the minimalls,

verbiage clogging the airways,

more divides our childhoods than the presence

or absence of secondhand smoke.

The earth to date still turning

and nobody falling off–

All the shit that would happen

wasn’t happening  yet.