The Acentos Review

Contained dream that expands

As a child I dreamt 
of every object in a
room      expanding
until they closed in
on me my tables
and chairs would
have to be scaled
my bed bucking me
out of it to grow
into its own
gargantuan shape
 the clock outside of
the dream would
tick into the dream
and the tick would
grow larger sound
becoming shape
growing larger until
I couldn’t move
past it every word
I imagined grew with
the room I saw
myself in parking
garages, looking up
at tires now full
moons car shells
without Goliath
drivers I try to leave
the rooms every
time and I talk from
 outside the dream
wake up stretches
up and outward this
is only a dream
 grows seven feet
both ways each
word a balloon
filling with my own
quick breath and
insistence that I am
real the rest is not
and I stand taller
 than the words I
shape around my
body and grip tight

 

 

 

 

Inheritance

 

A giant check and your grandfather at your door:

Dream about an alternative, a scene,

five nights in a row. Dream about digging up

the money. Change how you’ll say it

over and over. Rehearse this several times.

Rehearse this in the car as your parents wait inside

and the bag of money sits next to you.

Explain that you had to do it for closure, not rent.

Try to justify going to find the inheritance in the first place.

Spend it on gravel to fill in the six hundred and three holes you dug.

Spend it on something your grandfather wouldn’t have bought.

Spend it on birdseed to feed the sparrows.

Spent it on something your grandfather would have bought.

Put it in a bag. Put it under your bed.

Don’t wear gloves, inherit the earth,

let it push and edge its way under your nails

or use the hand shovel selected for you in the will.

Your grandfather fed the sparrows every afternoon –

they miss him and stand in the fountain,

pecking your loose change that sits underwater.

To receive your inheritance, you will have to find it

buried in approximately one hole per dollar.

 

 

 

 

Series of dreams in which [          ] has died

 

My grandfather asked my sister why

we had his barbecue grill in our backyard

 

and she had to tell him. I fell into another

in which my father promised he would

 

name another child after me someday and I

watched him for a second, felt my dreamself

 

processing and so did he - he reminded me

that it was tradition and then I knew.

 

I watched the neighbor, a lonely man, being

wheeled out of his house under a white sheet -

 

I didn’t see anyone following the gurney,

anyone following, anyone calling

 

family, only the flowing fabric and I said

I didn’t know they called ambulances for that,

 

for just the body, without the beating heart, and

then I felt the shape of my body relax

 

back into the bed - I remember I haven’t

died, I remember I haven’t died at all.