and when I woke up beside him I shuddered
because I was married to someone else,
because I wasn’t supposed to have been drinking,
because I was in a car from the fifties
wearing a dress from the fifties
parked on a dirt road I didn’t recognize
and the famous poet was drooling,
boxes of his books between us. I would have told you
right off this was a dream, but recently
a friend told me, write about a dream,
lose a reader and I didn’t want to lose you
right away. I wanted you to hear
that I didn’t even like the poet in the dream, that he has
four kids, the youngest one my age, and I find him
rather unattractive, that I only met him once,
that is, in real life, and that was in a large group
in which I barely spoke up. He disgusted me
with his disparaging remarks about women.
he even used the word “Jap”
which I took as a direct insult to my husband who’s Asian.
in the dream I guessed he’d given a reading--
because of the box of books--where maybe I met him,
where maybe I didn’t tell him I was a poet myself
or maybe I did, hoping he could help my career.
I don’t remember anything before the car,
and the vague sensation of having had sex
the night before. When we were first dating
I told the man who became my husband,
“You were talking in your sleep last night
and I listened, just to make sure you didn’t
call out anyone else’s name.” My husband said
that he couldn’t be held responsible for his subconscious
which worried me, which made me think his dreams
were full of blonde vixens in rabbit-fur bikinis,
but he said no, he dreamt mostly about boulders
and the ocean and volcanoes, dangerous weather
he witnessed but could do nothing about to stop.
And I said, “Well, I dream only of you,”
which was romantic and silly and untrue.
But I never thought I’d dream of another man--
my husband and I hadn’t even had a fight,
my head tucked sweetly in his armpit, my arm
around his belly which lifted up and down
all night, gently like water in a lake.
There were a lot of books in that box
which makes me think maybe the famous poet
didn’t sell many at his reading, which was my way
of insulting him in my dream, since I created
the whole thing. Maybe it was the fifties
because of the poet’s antiquated views of women
and the Japanese. It was right after World War II
everyone still reeling about the atrocities.
I’ve also read that everyone in your dream is you,
or at least an aspect of your personality,
in which case maybe the famous poet is someone
I want to integrate with and become.
My therapist says there were at least three kinds
of dreams--the kind in which you’re working
something out, the kind that suggest a premonition,
and the kind which are junk, the mind churning
and shredding, the mind simply a compost.
So all I can do is hope my dream was the junk kind
and the poet I dreamt about has forgotten me completely,
that if I met him on the street or at a conference
that he would walk by, famous in his sunglasses
or blazer with the suede patches at the elbows,
without so much as a glance in my direction.
I know you’re probably curious about who the poet is,
so I should tell you the clues I’ve left aren’t completely
accurate, that I’ve pretty much disguised his identity,
that you shouldn’t guess I bet it’s him. . .
because you’ll never guess correctly
and if you do, I won’t tell you that you have.
I can’t, as I wouldn’t want to embarrass a stranger
who is, after all, probably a nice person,
who I probably just met on a bad day,
who probably is growing a little tired of his fame--
which my husband and I perceive as enormous,
but how much fame can an American poet
really have, let’s say, compared to a rock star
or film director of equal talent? Not that much,
and the famous poet knows it, knows that he’s not
truly given his due. Knows that many
of these young poets tugging on his sleeve
are only pretending to have read all his books.
But he smiles anyway, tries to be helpful.
I mean, this poet has to have some redeeming qualities, right?
For instance, he writes a mean iambic.
Otherwise, what was I doing in his car.
0 ความคิดเห็น:
Post a Comment