Aubade

What do you do when dreams
and memories tangle, flash
scenes of stifling, whispers
of deceit, glimpse of incest?

Where do you draw the line,
unearth the truth when morning comes
and memory breathes fog, draws air?
On waking, a hangover of dread:

decipher the dream,
part the curtain
veiling the stash
of terrors in your head.

*

Peanuts

We all disappoint each other.
Nothing goes the way we hope.

In our secret inner expectation-
making chamber we weave
our dreams: the elephants
and their thick hides, strong tusks
circle the calf we are
huddled in the center of everything
eating our lavish grass and lapping
at a stream-fed turquoise pool.
The herd trumpets our survival,
no one breaks rank. Tough gray
flanks form an impermeable wall.

This is what I want.
Is it too much to ask?

*

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”