poem
Volume 24, Number 2

I Really Need to Stop Whining

Not every child in Africa is starving.

Asteroids, while traveling very fast, rarely strike the earth.

My son’s leukemia is not likely to return.

Shakespeare, by a preponderance of the evidence, is Shakespeare.

Our sun lacks the mass to supernova.

There will be no more space-shuttle disasters.

The Titanic will not sink twice.

Eventually, the global tsunami warning system will save lives.

In Detroit the murder rate is going down.

A Kardashian will never be President. Let me say that once again:
A Kardashian will never be President.

The sparrow that died crashing into our living room window
did not suffer.

My daughter will probably not be raped in her lifetime.

Not every newborn girl in India is killed by pouring sand in her mouth
until she suffocates.

The odds are quite slim that a nine point three earthquake
will crack open the earth and swallow my family whole.

Nightmares do not constitute the majority of my dreams.

This is a dream. I am dreaming now.


—Scott Hartwich