Impressions Knit a Story, a Dreamed Poem
Mike Wilson
I have a bad dream
where mantis-men with scissor hands attack.
I defend myself by waking up.
Then I sink back into the black.
Suddenly a me bigger than me
whooshes into the room.
My wide-eyed wife points frantically at the ceiling
like a railroad warning device having a fit
but a more solid version of her
calmly slips from bed to go take a pee.
The pointing one fades in a series of smoke rings
but for a moment I see them both at the same time.
*
My wife and I brush snow from iridescent plants.
Spring is a thing with roots deeper than mine.
We place the weeds we pull in a pile
because we don’t have a bucket.
We need a new composter, my wife says.
Della will give us hers.
Doug offers to fetch it in his black F-150
but I say It will take both of us to manhandle it.
I circle the house, past a sideways-growing tree
and the familiar friendly grin and wave of Dave.
Doug flings golf balls at me as I approach his truck.
To understand why, you’d have to understand Doug.
*
Ernie’s gaga over his new massage chair,
wild-eyed, blabbering as if he were drinking beer.
.
I try a sit, decide I want one, too.
I imagine it healing me, growing me, wholing me,
shaking loose bottlenecked energy particles,
so my juice gets evenly distributed.
Children with the build and gait of smurfs
play soccer, push back, fall down, get up, unhurt.
My wife is surprised, when she sips Ernie’s liquor—
it’s ancient Egyptian brandy, and she loves it.
I do too, it’s smooth as pecan pie,
and I have a barrel of slivovitz not even opened
In my foreseeable future, life is grand.
I can’t imagine demons with scissor-hands.
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including Mud Season Review, The Petigru Review, Still: The Journal, The Coachella Review, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic. His awards include the League of Minnesota Poets Award, Maine Poets Society Award, and Chaffin/Kash Prize of the Kentucky State Poetry Society. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.