Dear Dead Man
Dream: in a kitchen in a house with family all around I see a car out the screen door and recognize the boy. He comes in wearing a dark brown silk suit the kind old men wear to weddings. The suit is too big for him
— he looks like a child. I hug him hello and he says how nice of me to remember him. He returns my hug and whirls me around. It’s awkward, he’s so bony and against my stomach I feel he has an enormous erection.
The man sits across from me listening so intently that his hands take on my gesture. Dream: I bring him a poem which I retrieve out of my blouse. Angry at my father. Make a nightgown for my mother wonder how much I have to do to pay off my debt. I look at my nose in the mirror — the way the light falls along my nose, been waiting all my life to see that light.
Tenderness: After anger comes, in all of Shakespeare the men alone exhibit. I risk and do not get my chance. I would look inward past the surprise of skin to the place where brain is blood all thought liquid like action. I only draw — my words lose their meaning in the beauty of ink’s tremulous shapes.
Grandpa lizard lies abed
Grandpa lizard lies abed
He no longer captures cookies
With his tongue
Is the smile still in his eyes
Loss and
Loss
The child is a secret to the world and to himself; a closed fist. My house is full of hairy boys and their smells
— potatoes mushrooms something sweet like figs. I miss the privacy of words alone at home. Words trying not to trail their skirt hems in the ink walking with their skirts a little aloft. You are a slammed door. I go to the past to imagine you but even the past is now colored by No.
Lost — unused. Nail parings, the hair in the brush, the sloughed off blood, the cells that came to nought.
Dream: children with guns. After a death my mother tells me — you’re going to sit down and be quiet. Trying to construct goodbye. Falling asleep — suddenly see myself flying at you into an embrace. A stranger tells me — you breathe in everything he says. I ask how does he know if I don’t know. The stranger bows out. Dream: a man with a gun pointed at me.
I talk to you about prose and poetry — putting them together — you find love in everything. I am the girl who stayed home and made drawings at the kitchen table. Dreamed a lover a giant rosebush all a-flower and I was wearing my goodbye shoes.
A child’s hand emerges from my back. Is that myself drowning in myself? He tries to drown himself. Next
scene — I’ve kept him from drowning. To write, wait for a word then follow to learn oneself enough to not always fail in the same way. Dreams come right up to the edge of light then abandon me. The story comes to an end — the book bursts into flame.
A dream with a dream in its pocket.
The cat awakens me — the dream abandons me — I am sorrow but the sky is morning. Near death she took his hand — he hadn’t expected love. Hungry and chained up outside the house I will bite any small animal. A small child comes near and I think — go away or I’ll have to bite you. Can’t kill anger.
If I can’t imagine you I can’t imagine me. Dear dead man there was a dream — I sat in your chair, we discussed my sitting there.
An artist and poet, Ditta Baron Hoeber’s poems have been published in a number of magazines including Burningword Literary Review, Noon: journal of the short poem, Juxtaprose, Pank, the American Poetry Review, Contemporary American Voices and the American Journal of Poetry which nominated her work for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, Loss is Loss, was recently named winner of the Juxtaprose chapbook contest. Her first book, Without You is due out from Black Spring Press Group this summer.
Her photographs, drawings and book works have been exhibited nationally and have been acquired by several collections in the US and in the UK.