I Was There For Your Somniloquy
is a collection of poems published by Omnidawn.
Some poems from the book online:
THE OFFENDING ADAM
.....Claim & Reclaim
....."On Adam"
Published in The Journal Fall/Winter 2009
AFTERLIFE
I place you in a shallow dish,
watch the water touch your body, touch my hand.
Preservation holds our minds in salt,
light, formaldehyde. I say crystallize and you’re
tongue-tied. Heaven opens just wide enough to slip through.
They told me you were impossible to care for. They told me
you would be unidentifiable, thin wet sliver of impersonal pronouns.
The task of unknotting you begins with bathing. Your insides: bottle
of shoe polish, crushed ivory, coil of copper strings, ends frayed.
I place you in a shell; pray.
Starvation reminds me of when I was stubborn, in love.
Doves are feathery little burdens; worms want to eat us
after we’ve gone to hell. Wouldn’t it be perfect to keep shape
and color, after such a long time?
After all the seawater in the world won’t bring you back.
If sea slugs are not put to sleep before being killed and preserved, they tend to retract into a shapeless ball. When dissected, their internal organs are usually so misplaced and contorted, that an understanding of their anatomy is very difficult.
. . .
Published in The Journal Fall/Winter 2009
PARASOMNIA
That’s all.
In the middle of the night. You get hungry
and there’s peanut butter. You reach for it,
the jar and spoon.
Experts say that loneliness is prone
to peanut butter. That we’ll walk in our sleep at least
once. The second hand on the kitchen clock tells
the dream it can go forward.
That delicious ticking
in the mouth.
When you remember
eating, it’s almost three days
after. You’re sitting in a coffee shop chewing
on a straw.
It doesn’t taste like peanuts, but there’s something
oily in the plastic.
How does it go in the fairytale? Someone’s been licking
the linoleum. Someone sliced a bar of soap
and polished it off with your wine.
There are clues.
A chunk of your heart, canned on a cabinet shelf. Like a gooey
pear half, now pale. Someone stitched your chest
before morning. Your ribs felt sore.
The night’s events, pieced as if putting a biscuit back
together. Impossible, but here are flakes and finger crumbs.
Morsels of a body who is trying to preserve you:
it is you
you’re going hungry for.
Experts say when you wake on the roof, you’ve tried to jump
but couldn’t go forward.
You listen for a time
when the clock didn’t blink, when a hand was the sound
of a swollen hinge opening, squeezing
minute by minute, your name, your tongue.
The lid,
you reach for it.
Now your jaw is set. Now the light cannot fork through.
. . .
Published in The Greensboro Review 2007
AN ECLIPSE
At first these angels come, lopsided pockets. Wind blows in any
direction. A body emerges like a bear, heavy, bristling, with
strength to rip a door from its hinges. A bedroom we say. Yours, we
say. Some will grab the necks of their wives like hunters dragging
turkeys. Life on earth is already mysterious. A closet falls in on itself.
You crawl into the wallpaper or climb into a bathtub filled with
boots. Everything happens. What is left is not enough to free you. It
means a rabbit will die; a cat corners its shadow in its sleep—more
proof. When it happens, we place ourselves in bags. We fall against
the doorway, still, swallowed.
. . .