Their silky surfaces:
            material so immaterial
you reach right through
            trying to grab hold
& the dream's warm body
            slides into the black lake

Their plastic refractions:
            all buckle & bend
you're multiplied
            in the dream's glass palace
swollen ears or nose
            legs tapered to nothing

Their endless archives:
            all your ghost voices
alive in the dream’s
            arterial files & rigged
for shuffle play over
            your droning narration

Their circular architecture:
            each dream room
opens like water
            into a new childhood
with your same furniture
            same unlearned lessons

Their burlesque predilections:
            in the dream’s bad movie
you’ve seen it all somewhere
            pratfalls & monsters & yet
you wake in a sweat
            auteur & audience

Their bronze insolubility:
            you pull a thick rope
braided by history
            to clang the dream bell
& it rings your own
            life-hammered heart

Scott Lowery is a poet, musician and retired educator, recently relocated to Milwaukee from rural Minnesota. He has recent poems in Nimrod, River Styx, and RockPaperPoem, and a new chapbook, Mutual Life, due out in 2023 from Finishing Line. Scott loves working in classrooms with young writers; examples can be found at scottloweryblog.wordpress.com