Kimberly Quiogue Andrews

In the dream, I was watching TV, only the TV was actually a series of small objects that I held in my hands and could change by changing the channel. A basketball; a small plastic box; other things lost to sleep. Changing the channel stopped working when I held in my hands a tiny donkey. Lying on its side, the donkey reposed and the people around me (there were suddenly people around me) cooed and sighed, fawning over the donkey in my hands. It was only upon closer inspection that I realized I held in my hands two things: the donkey and one of the donkeys legs, which had been separated from its body. "It's injured," I said. "Its leg has been pulled off," I said. Somehow, no one but me seemed to notice. Cooing and sighing. As to an infant. I began to realize that the donkey was suffering, its mane and coat made coarser with streaks and flecks of blood. I wanted to change the channel. The channel would not change. I wanted the donkey to die. I could not kill it. In the dream, there was then the trunk of a car, and a sense of uneasy peace. Dreams are often boring because they are merely allegorical. The channel of my mind changes, and I slide accidentally into a pond. Frustrated and in up to my waist, somehow I know that the donkey has died. But now I am alone. There is no one listening, but then again, in the dream, this was always the case.

from the journal SIXTH FINCH
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This is the only poem I've ever written that literally came to me in a dream. I am very anti-mysticism when it comes to the work of writing (this shows up in the poem itself), but nevertheless, I will take a gift when it's offered to me!

Kimberly Quiogue Andrews on "The Donkey"
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