STUFF OF DREAMS______________________________________
photo: paige miller hmua: anna strother & jane lee
fashion & set stylist: nikita kalyana writer: kelly wei
models: maggie deaver & darnell forbes
do the children of the new world know how to forgive yet?
does forgiveness mean a loosening of the fist,
an unhinging of the heart from the roof of our mouths,
so that we may finally say something
anything
nice about ourselves?
does it mean we get out of bed and wrestle our heads out
from the crowded waters of our dreams,
so that we may make a new home out in the brave new world?
blood in the courts,
blood on my father’s hand,
blood in the mouth of the tv man —
some brave, new world.
so now we wear the faces of a thousand departed souls
and against their wishes march in the wine-dark streets,
contorting the ancestral into something augural —
something we might be proud of someday.
do the children of the new world know how to forgive yet?
how to not?
do we carry our dreams into the pale lands
beyond childhood? fragments, anyway;
the bedroom
where we swam like lover-fish in a tank and
the lily pond
where in the mud i buried your spoon and
the garden of suns
where you invited me and mister rabbit for
tea and mouth amusements.
i knew what a precious thing it was, that musical wilderness.
we all did.
the dense miles of forests in our minds,
and the strange creatures stalking in the rich underbrush.
we knew it would, like all stuff of dreams,
someday fizzle into smoke.
published in spark magazine issue no. 15: amuse-bouche