Dan Mauro turns an ordinary bowl of cornflakes into a nightmare. Black dragons leap out of the milk and snap at the speaker, and the cereal becomes something out of a horror movie. The speaker feels helpless and childlike, wanting to scream but unable to, and the poem even compares the fear to being sick like a drunk. Then an alarm rings, and we realize it was a dream.
The relief doesn't last, though. The speaker skips breakfast and hurries past the cereal box, which still seems "possessed." The ending is the funniest and most telling part: the speaker knows they can't avoid breakfast forever and will one day have to face the cornflakes. The mood mixes silliness with real dread. It's a joke about something as harmless as cereal, but it also captures how a nightmare can leave a lingering unease, and how avoiding a fear only postpones it.