Now, I'm going to read one lyric poem from my first book,
The Year of Blue Water.
And then the rest of the book is a sequence of prose poems.
So I won't pause for titles or anything.
You'll just get a slightly more dramatic pause
in between sections.
"Dream diary.
You're awake, then you are standing,
then the last thing that you dreamed
will unfold its field of memory.
What you touch will come to life,
a whole room sprung in the backwards words of people
on talking to you.
Walking reversed with such confidence
until you reach another room.
There stands this person who is also a talisman.
In the dream, it doesn't matter when they loved you.
In the dream when you talk, the butterflies
are orange and then blue.
And together, you lead the rabble to the square
where you touch this person and then leave them.
And on cue, a flock of pigeons will soon
want nothing but to return to you.
And on cue, the cedars become green and then stone.
This person unmaking love from you
and placing the pieces elsewhere again on Earth
until before that, until the somewhere else
before you agreed to move.
Then you are language too, backwards words
unstuck to the dream as the dream began to happen.
And the ghosts inside the many rooms
rustle nude inside the blue water.
And the ghosts inside the many rooms
illuminate the many walls."