For Some Copper

The red tent has a great show.
For some copper - although
the boy in front of me said
he was going to pay with

his baseball - this big man
writes your name with a
light projector across the
forehead of a four-legged

chaser. He has it chained still
to the floor of a cage. My name
is so long that he couldn't get
the whole thing on its head.

And even if I was called Ri,
the letters would have
competed with the shadow
of the bars through which

the man shined his machine.
For some copper, though - or
a baseball - that's a good
deal. I would have paid

silver to see that show.

Eric Otto is an Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities at Florida Gulf Coast University. He is the author of Green Speculations: Science Fiction and Transformative Environmentalism.

Find more by Eric Otto in the Author Index.

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