SmokeLong Quarterly

I only know a few stories about the way things were before, even though I want to know everything. People don’t like to talk about it, except when they’re feeling nostalgic. I know about some things that used to be around, like the Super Bowl, and cable tee-vee, and zoos. My cousin David, who is a lot bigger than me, told me all about pandas. They lived in cages which he explained are like boxes with bars on one side so you CAN’T get out but you CAN see what you’re missing. They wouldn’t mate in captivity, which is when you’re a prisoner, and they had to watch panda pornO so they would know what to do and how to do it. I have never seen pornO but I know all about it because that’s the kind of thing that Jim gets nostalgic about all the time.

Jim lives in a cardboard box on the corner of the street. He could just live in 3035 Q Street like the rest of us but it wouldn’t be the same, he says, it wouldn’t be like before. His box doesn’t have any bars so he is not in captivity but he still has some problems mating.

Anyway, David said that he would go and visit pandas in the zoo, which is like jail for animals, even if they weren’t bad. Now they don’t live in the zoo anymore, because there is no zoo, but you don’t even have to leave the apartment to see them, since they are everywhere. Out of captivity, David told me, they didn’t have any problems mating. Someone planted a small bamboo forest that also didn’t have any problems mating, and now shoots come up higher than skyscrapers and you have to weave yourself through the streets if you want to go visiting. My dad tried to chop down all the bamboo on Q Street, but it came right back up even thicker, like he hadn’t even tried.

When I was little, the bamboo was not like it is now. We would watch it growing thicker and wider and unrulier and the grownups would say, We better do something about this, or we’ll be caged in soon. But nobody ever did anything. We have nowhere to go.