The Dream

by Patricia Carragon

From meeting to meeting—
a Back-to-School storyboard
brought a dream to life.

The merchant’s ideas,
the marketing team’s compliance,
the copy edits and reshoots.

From birth to sign-off,
the dream got approved,
ran the next day on cable networks.

The model’s slim curves played hard sell—
blue-eyed sensuality
in high-priced denim.

The call for male daydreams and female cash,
even for college grads swimming in debt.

Genes to fit the jeans—
depending on the customer’s ass, color, age,
and income.

Jeans to fit a dream.

Jeans tearing at the seams.

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Patricia Carragon is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee from Poets Wear Prada. She hosts the Brownstone Poets Reading Series and serves as editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is the editor of Sense & Sensibility Haiku Journal and is listed on the poet registry of The Haiku Foundation. Her latest jazz poetry collection, Stranger on the Shore (Human Error Publishing, 2026), was recently released. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.