29: waking & sleeping
A collection of fragment poems inspired by the merging of dreams with living emotional landscapes during a season of change and loss.
I wrote this book in stolen hours while fumbling through a tempestuous year.
I published it a year later while living in Belize. It was difficult to get the printers to understand my quirky style choices. Took two runs and still there were inconsistencies appearing in the font files. I could not explain what was unacceptable to the printers when i was already breaking so many rules.
Remainders of this as-is special can be purchased for $15 by contacting me directly at alismorrissoto@gmail.com
february
i.
Silence circles outside in long hushes. Inside moist rust breathes between tap & drain. Ecstatic moth a proton around yellow lumens hung center. Darkness licks away all corners.
Ii.
Eye parts once pink are now gray. He says sorry after impulse sentences. When he eats he asks her to be in the room. (I am not an insect.) my brothers wait for his long hug. His ribs branches against my sky. (I am not an insect.)
Iii.
Saying goodbye you slap my waist. Say i make it harder than it needs to be. I look at you my eyes burning like I’m at the bottom of the pool. I can’t smell you. I can’t taste you. I can’t feel you. I can’t even hear you. The way your lips move (like fish parting) the way your hands hang (like empty pockets) i know next i will die.
Iv.
Flung from his chest into the deep end. My lungs my heart: flotation devices bleached and floating next to the 5 1/2.
V.
The day i fell in love the road i was passing over stopped underneath me. Sea-sky-islands: thirty blues to my left. Orchards-hills-earth: thick hands holding. The road my breath—i waited in sand for an hour to catch it again.
Vi.
Air/ desire/ breath/ awaken. Dream/ breathe/ become. Buried in my chest/ eaten by my blood. My blood blooms (blue-red blue-red blue-red). In my lungs a longing with no object rustles in & leaves.
Vii.
My mad dog desire dug a hole under the fence & ran wild tipping cans in your third world. I should train that dog. Should take her on more walks with a tight leash. Put powder on her so she won’t itch like that . People might stop to pet her. Might ask her name.
Old bone lost in some one else’s dream. While i have been living in the small of my imagination. No strength to call her back. Sometimes i see her near the grocery. Tossing her a bread heal (jaw snap two chews—gone) i wonder if she remembers shy porch where she gnawed her hips clean.
I never call her name over my shoulder.
Never hear her four-foot rhythm follow.
