The Book of Dreams
Andrea Jurjević
I fall asleep under the tremolo voice box of the moon
I fall asleep under the scratched cymbal of the moon
The moon that's the stone lodged in the throat of the night
The night so exiled it wants to find its way back home

I dream about the tough heel of a walnut roll from 1975
And sharing its sweet December bits with a clan of crows
I dream about a crow that's my imaginary older brother
And a girl dance-swaying her bovine hips into widowhood

I dream of sun shooting itself up between the sharp shanks of hills
Down the ravine a woeful snake rent with a blunt fish knife
I dream of pouring woe into mugs and topping it with red wine
The river man that's parched and all I have is that wine

In a dream I'm lying on a salamander-sleek slab inside a cave
Beside a skinless drum simmering with fat carp
The fish leaping in and out of the stew are soldiers in a foxhole
In a dream my love stirs that stew with long white oars

I have a native tongue and I grow a foreign one too
I have a need for closed captions when I talk to people
I have no feelings about god and a shipyard of suspicions about men
I also have rooms filled with clocks riffing in double time

I have a longing for the coiling shadows of cypresses
And a pull toward the soft gray hook of the moon
I have memory drawers filled with sweet chicory root
A pull to the purple lip of the sea and its theremin breath

In a naked dream I fall on the dock mum as cargo
Beg the rain to drop song on the pillows of my palms
The moon slips away like a pearly soap bubble
A glistening nipple pulled from a wet mouth

I winter in that waver
My bones are oars and within me a shady lady rows
I wake seasick from the sloshing in my veins
In another country I'm rain
from the book IN ANOTHER COUNTRY / Saturnalia Books
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
“The Book of Dreams” was originally written for Deep Signal (2019), an anthology of speculative fiction, to accompany cover art by Michael Kaluta. The artist based the cover on the keywords “cosmos storytelling,” and I wrote in response to Kaluta’s artwork.

Andrea Jurjević on "The Book of Dreams"
"Phil Christman on the Poetics of Place"

"When I think of what the Midwest gave to my imagination, I think first of the way this landscape suddenly shifted in those moments, the way I suddenly felt that I didn’t know it. It’s not only the flatness that writers like Michael Martone and Marilynne Robinson have described so well—how it makes the world into a kind of showcase or theater of the glory of God or of humankind or of the inexplicable—but a duality.

via LIT HUB
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
What Sparks Poetry:
Lloyd Wallace on Language as Form


"As the poet attempts to bring their past into the present, into the poetic medium, attempting to make it a keepable artifact, we can see it being buried by the world, by outer artifice, just as the past is buried by the present. The key pathos—the beauty—of this poem is that as we see the poet speaking, we also see them disappear. So, to amend a previous statement: yes, the poem is full of evidence that the poet has lived. But it’s also evidence that she is disappearing, too."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
donate
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2024 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency