“In the dreamer’s dream, the dreamed one awoke.”
–Jorge Luis Borges
The tuning fork broke when you dreamt
lung, stone, seawater. So I am
incomplete, a sigil with no center,
wearing only this cotton shirt. Flames
lick the circle, a falling vortex
and I am still phantom, homunculus.
This calls for operas, overtures. A red remedy
so I might grow fat and tangible. Your trances
are tidepools swirling black, a place where
the bread burns, the cakes fall flat.
Why should I be any different?
I fill your cups and ashtrays hoping to grow
limbs, to be something less chimerical
than you intended. Sometimes I taste
sugar in my mouth. This usually corresponds
with your breakfast. You did not expect me
to assume the shape of a raven, but really
I am anything that wings discordant, rippling
from wherever you might fall.
Susan Slaviero’s first full length collection of poetry, CYBORGIA, is available from Mayapple Press. She has two chapbooks: Apocrypha (Dancing Girl Press, 2009) and An Introduction to the Archetypes (Shadowbox Press, 2008). Her work has appeared in journals Rhino, Flyway, Oyez Review, Artifice Magazine, and others both online and in print. She designs and edits the woman-centered lit zine blossombones.