a.
from "Early Spring in the Mountains"

13

I dreamed I had given birth to a field of lilies, and then
that I slapped a raccoon.
All of my friends were gathered to hear these poems
and waited impatiently. When I woke up
it was raining lightly. As before, I ignored it,
and it went away.


b.
from "New Hampshire Sketches"

34
A terrible dream, in which Carlos is being taken to be killed. He seems grieved that I will allow it, but doesn't struggle, as if he had given up. We pass an old man, and Carlos tells me, "If I'd had a chance to have a grandfather I wouldn't mind as much." We go outside. Carlos is being carried by the killer. A fresh wind takes us, and Carlos begins to struggle and kick, as if the wind were the life that he suddenly didn't want to lose. I begin to sob, and my sobbing wakes me. I sob for half an hour, terrified. Joan holds me. All day I sob when I think of it.


c.
THE EXECUTIONER

1
Here is a dream. I am at a meeting about capital punishment. I alone
rise in lament for the fate of the executioner,
the man-butcher. A taste
for cannibalism,
I thought.

2
My room is cold. Various greyness
light snowfall, a night
to hide in blankets.
It was as if
I were the executioner
about whom
I had spoken.


d.

After a feast,
distended,
I sit among starving Africans, their naked
flesh hanging like rotted cloth, that
flaccid. I give them,
smiling,
an almost empty bucket from which
they will not eat. Even in sleep. Even in company.


e.

swimming in dark waters.


dream waters.

f.

FOR LAURIE

You have become in my dream
an operative for the Department
of Internal Affairs, you tell me, explaining
the IA button you wear
above the left breast of your summer dress. And your eyes
are suddenly a hiding-place. You are in charge of my heart
and will know my subversions
as you once catalogued my interest in the bodies of other women
no matter how I tensed my neck to control my glances. I suppose
I am writing about love and mystery
in my own and in your eyes, of the persons lurking there
that neither of us know but whose movements we monitor,
suspicious not only of intent, but action. In my craziness they erupt
from me, and I seek
a monitor I call caring, but,
being one of those corner loungers, expect pursuit
when I run, your gaze
still following me. What is it
you want, I ask
myself, that you cannot have this morning? Oh,
love, as it never was, and isn't,
that says,
rest now, you have done enough.



   Mark Weiss
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