When people asked what he did, Donald Long’s standard riposte was, “I’m a mechanic of the dream.” Meaning, he was a projectionist.

I can hear him, in the next room but one, typing away. An answer to Pamela’s Special Delivery letter perhaps? Or lists of moneymaking projects. Possibly even a story, or a revised out line forPopcorn, in which he will refute the errors of our age.

Like antelope bounding across
the wide lawns of Africa
are these flames that leap

It's like heaven: you've got to die
To get there. And you can't be sure.
The publisher might go out of business.

Too brief to be called
A song, yet so distinctive:
What bird can it be?

At first she is only mildly annoyed: the car
won't start, it's happened before. She'll phone
her husband—what is his name?—at his office,

One moment the sky is its usual dark,
Dimensionless self, and the next, with a double burst—
Two spreading spheres of radiance, phosphor

All summer long
while other trees
reached for more

Two sharp eminences with a valley between
Through which the erratic witness of a loosened tongue
Flows to the sea: Mount M__________. Mark it well.

This will be your office, Mr. Blank,
While you remain attached to the Poetry .
Division of the Department of Mediocrity.

The pie here doesn’t taste
As though it were meant
To be eaten nor can I

Rectangularity controls the setting
Of tables, the organization of paint
On canvas, and the sport of ping-pong.

The raison d’etre of much
Aestheticism, as of
the entire hermetic tradition

I have a feeling that I will not die
For quite some time. Only poets with a kind
Of supererogatory strength of mind,

The       Joyful Feelings       met you as
Yesterday emerged from        the tiny windows
outside Tiffany’s        My rough

Tom Disch’s poem “Donna Reed in the Old Scary House” appeared in our Fall 1995 issue. A prolific poet, novelist, science-fiction writer, and author of children’s books—including The Brave Little Toaster: A Bedtime Story for Small Appliances—Disch fre…