Poem of the Week, In My Dreams, Liz Baudler

It was about time we posted some of Editrice Liz's work. And this poem is just crazy enough for a heat wave. Stay cool.

In My Dreams

by Liz Baudler

Sarcasm and integrity have broken a mirror. It takes seven years for the shards to dissipate in a landfill and meanwhile I have to go to the bathroom. (There are other needs.) Blank chapbooks exist. We pull up the covers and the lightbulb smirks for thirty seconds. A hundred sparking matches and synapses (before the taking of toast and tea?) are bisected by old envelopes we can’t begin to open but there will be nothing there but soft immaturity of stone.

Kleenex? Ayn Rand? What the hell is a disposable theory foe doing in the middle of my notebook? She says, in a sarcastic Russian accent, “I zhink you dropped zis.” All that happens is that she holds out a pile of leaves sewed into continuous cloth and continues being frozen. All that happens is that I don’t ask her why leaves instead of well, paper or stone. The name of the leaves are In My Dreams, at least that’s what she’s written across them in Cyrillic. (For someone who doesn’t speak English, she has very neat handwriting.) They crumple as soon as I have read the message with a cry like a cat’s.

Astronomy is quintessential to our apathy, the quiet closet is autonomy. I want to be brave with you, but what do I want? Let sarcasm and integrity be professors crying over a dust mote, who touched the last kiss, who will pick up the student body.