Tag: dream

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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WHEN THE WOMAN TOLD ME SHE SELDOM USES A PEN OR A PENCIL

Her dailiness now being key-stroke
and finger-strike,

no ink drying, no textures of
a rough or creamy page–

I tried to imagine having forgotten or
never having learned how each word

takes its time to be born, the rise
and curve and dip of a letter,

the scritch-scritch on paper
like a patter of raindrops on the roof

of a garret where a woman once leaned
over a desk, writing her story by hand.

*

AFTER THE DREAM, MY FRIEND
       In memory, Rosemary

I woke up with her on my mind,
though not on my mind really–
an essence
hovering around me
like coastal weather–
her presence, the giant redwood
so often sheathed in mist
who still stands there–
a great reassurance on the path.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Two Emilys (Kelsay Books) and Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press). A new collection entitled The Presence of One Word is forthcoming later in 2025. Recent poems can be found in CALYX Journal, Presence, New York Times Book Review, Earth’s Daughters, and Poem. You can find her at andreapotos.com

Four Poems by Barbara Crooker

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THE COUPLE

Under a cloud of Covid restrictions,
ending up on the shores of hospice,
the couple set out in their canoe,

He was in the stern, steering as usual;
she was in the bow, looking for hazards.
The waves piled up; she began to bail,

while never letting go of his hand.
The journey lasted four nights; darkness
splashing over the gunwales. He grew

tired; she kept paddling. Eventually,
they started to drift with the current, which
took him out with the tide, then set him down

gently, on the farthest shore.

*

THE DREAM

          Mark Chagall, 1945, oil on canvas

The prone artist with a palette in the bottom of this painting
is conjuring up our wedding. A snapshot of us just floated up
on Facebook; it’s our anniversary. Were we ever really
that young? You in your powder blue leisure suit, me
in my Gunne Sax by Jessica McClintock prairie dress.
In this painting is what came later, le tour Eiffel, la Seine,
her arched bridges, us in la belle France. This is happiness
enclosed in the bubble of the full moon. Nobody thinks
about what comes next, how one day one of us will sleep
alone. But though I’m blue, sometimes you come to me
in dreams. And my heart is infused with the thousand petals
of the rose-colored dawn.

*

THREE YEARS LATER

I know you’re gone, but my body remembers,
especially at night when we curled into
each other, bears in a den, silverware
in a drawer. Plaid pajamas, worn flannel
sheets, we made our own sort of nest
in the winter dark. The moon, a ball of frost,
floated outside. Some nights, we heard
the ghostly notes of Great Horned Owls
as they courted, called to each other:
you you you. The way I hear you calling
my name, even though I know
you are not here.

*

PANTOUM IN WINTER

Gray day in January, and light snow is sifting,
shifting, fine white music, slanted lines.
No cars, delivery trucks, not even dog walkers.
Just this silence, and the hush of bird wings.

This shifting linear music, slanted white lines.
Notes from the leaden skies: tiny shooting stars.
There’s nothing but silence and the hush of wings.
How do we weather all these losses?

Messages from the sky: stray meteors burning white.
A stutter, a stammer, white delineating every twig and limb,
coating every tree. How do we weather these losses?
Snow geese pour out of the quarry, white shimmering

into white. A stutter, a stammer, covering branch and bark.
Gray day in January, and light snow is drifting,
snow so fine the line between visible and invisible blurs.
The difference, Nemerov says, between poetry and prose.

*

Barbara Crooker is author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry, including Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press, longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, The Book of Kells, which won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea, and Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024). Her other awards include: Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature. Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
www.barbaracrooker.com

After My Father Died by Sara Backer

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After My Father Died

I longed to spend time with him in a dream
but over two years passed without one. I’m afraid I’ll forget
how he whistled Cole Porter and the way he squeezed
his eyes when he stuttered on Ws. When a dream came at last,
I heard his voice—but couldn’t see him.
I looked around: an outdoor festival, stage tents, musicians.
My sister waited in one of the tents. My father, invisible,
said I could continue to hear him or I could be with my sister.
The choice was presented like chicken or fish—no other options,
I couldn’t have both, and it was up to me.
I looked beyond stages to overlapping hills streaked with mist.
Too far to see, I knew a weighty ocean rolled indifferent through its tides.
Nothing more was voiced. As I walked to the tent,
I saw my sister’s thick blue sweater on the seat beside her,
saved for me.

*
Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck (Flowstone Press 2019) follows two poetry chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press) and Bicycle Lotus which won the 2015 Turtle Island chapbook award. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art and reads for The Maine Review. Recent publications include The Pedestal Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Slant, CutBank and Kenyon Review.