How Prunes Are Made

When taking a bath in the tub The first thing you'll notice, if you stay in too long, Is how your fingertips shrivel. Then, as you rub and scrub, You might see bits of skin coming off your legs and arms And you begin to grow little. Some children pay no attention To the warning signs I mention; They stay in the bathtub all afternoon, Until they start to dissolve. They get smaller and smaller and smaller Until they're far too small to holler; They get wrinklier and wrinklier and pretty soon They've shrunk so much there's nothing left Except a ball of wrinkled skin Where once a healthy kid had been. This wrinkled skin is dyed blue And sold in the store as a prune. "How Prunes are Made" was in Nomo the Zine, November 1991, and was reprinted in The Ratty's Gazette 8, 1995. It is a poem in the ongoing series "Lucifera's Questionable Daycare Poems and Stories."