The dream says it’s more stripper 
than costume. More black light 
than bandage. You’re up to 
ironweed and the dream 
has stepped out of its shorts.  
Jewelweed jack in the pulpit 
jacaranda. Knapweed. 
The dream begins 
to hiss disconcertingly. 
It shakes its paper bag of seeds.  
See what I mean? 
Throws its shirt on the floor.  
Love in a mist. Lupine. 
See how it compensates? 
It gets sloppy. It spills 
down its bra. It’s sticky. It howls. 
Milkweed. Remember? 
You’ll be enmeshed soon. 
You bring the tea cake, 
the sweet demeanor.
The dream accepts devours 
offers up your favorite failing. 
It won’t leave you alone. 
Be comforted. 

The dream says hear me out hear me out,
and you fill your ears with earth. The dream 
isolates your need into various isotopes 
of appetite. Embarrasses you, 
though you’ve said you’re beyond all that. 
Tells you not to worry, pivots the scene  
towards gorgeous. The smell of crushed grass, 
someone’s hip, whippoorwill and banjo, 
pancake, purr. The dream doesn’t judge. 
Offers smut and constellations. 
Offers workaday scenarios This is you, it says, 
returning the jar of pickles to the empty place 
in the fridge. This is you coming in a car. 
Waking up bewildered. Whose hand. 
This is you waiting a long time 
on a step attached to no house. 
The dream says keep waiting 
and rooms will materialize 
behind you. Soon, a door, a knob; 
soon, you enter.

The dream says what exists 
before you bring the words 
is changed by the words when they come. 
Elephantine. Bent, like the sweetgrass 
the cricket leapt onto and held. Submerged. 
The dream says fathomless and you think 
of the dark in the swimming hole, the soup pot, 
but the dream means geese leaving 
and shows that to you. You can’t keep that,
or anything, says the dream. 
Walmart shimmering across the parking lot 
with its ordered packs of socks, its bathmats: 
also temporary, so temporary you can 
simultaneously withstand and enjoy it. 
The dream says standing in line 
you might learn something, listening 
to the person in front of you 
and the person behind.

The dream says Freud says 
no matter what, it’s all your fault. 
Become accustomed over time 
to responsibility’s lead chemise. 
The dream says there’s no need 
to be startled by the revelation 
of what you wish. 
Like undoing an owl pellet. 
What’s inside is not unexpected: 
bone shard turned fastener 
and all the other undigestibles 
revealed. The dream says Jung says 
to count the bones and be comforted. 
They match up in equal measure 
with your lack, with your pleasure. 
The dream says Jung says the dream 
doesn’t lie. I’m constitutionally incapable 
of such a thing, it crows, and throws 
out a blanket on which to display 
your bile and your ember, your 
tender green alongside your wrath.

The dream says nothing, 
but shows you a parked car 
and a button-down unbuttoning 
or being buttoned up or a hand 
on a warm waist. The dream 
is out of date with its offering: 
manual transmission. 
The dream provides 
manual transmission as relief 
from artificial intelligence. 
It rains into the hydrangeas’
late-season, heavy heads. 
They bend to rest 
against the earth. The dream 
keeps you warm, presses
your hands against 
the engine block. 
Filled with rain, you rest 
your heavy head 
against the earth.

The dream says to review the manuscript. 
Says to preserve that which stings and to excise 
that which suffocates.  The wasp can stay: 
it’s cold outside, their paper home has burst 
below the tree. Of the limited but several 
gallantries within your power, one is to offer
this small safety. You can stay in the dream, 
you tell the wasp. When the nest fell, 
it broke apart – embarrassing for the wasps,  
revealed in all their fervor. Wasp, I feel you, 
you say. You may rest a while on my headboard, 
you tell the one whose antennae tremble. 
In this way you invite danger. 
The dream assures you its amplitude 
is more than vast enough to encompass 
tenderness such as this.

The dream says when the horse enters 
it is not your horse it is everyone’s 
horse the same horse that has always been 
running, the collective horse in everyone’s 
amygdala, everyone tracking Bucephalus 
across the horizon. This is my horse though 
you say because I breathed into its nostrils 
thirty years ago it has carried me everywhere 
other than here and also here it has carried me 
and also I have carried it by which I mean to say, 
you tell the dream; you are the one 
making it drum across my skull. The dream 
braids the horse’s mane and tail 
with gorse and goldenrod. Heather. 
Heliotrope. The dream braids 
the horse’s mane and tail with twist ties 
and plastic bags. Names it Everlasting. 
Invites it into the living room, which 
troubles you at first. The dream asks 
if you have heard of root wedging, 
how the small thing expands over time 
to push the rocks apart. The dream 
runs a curry comb down your flank, 
breathes into your nostrils. Laughs 
when you protest. I am not a horse, 
‍you say. I am not a horse. I am not 
a horse.