Red State
       

Sometimes streetlamps flicker
outside of my bathroom window.
Old hallucinations rattle out of my left eye
and my dead body trickles out of the other.
Sometimes I wake up from a drunk dream,
it smells like dandelions in wet dirt. Sometimes
I dig deeper into the dream and my brain falls into
a barrel of wine. I splash. Convince myself
to stay in the holy water until I ferment.
If I do get out alive it costs me my lungs,
both my hands, at least one leg, my eyesight,
and my tongue. It takes                         all my breath.

Sometimes I wake up from a drunk dream,
my fingers stained red. I must have scratched
my legs all night as if I could scrape my way out
of this disease. I take a shower, get dressed,
change the sheets, then check my email.
Every message says that I didn't drink the wine,
that it guzzled me. Just before sunrise
the streetlamps stop flickering. A dog barks,
a garbage truck drives by. It's Tuesday,
July 19. I hurtled out of sleep to get here.

Every so often I hitchhike in a dream,
alone on the side of the road. I wait
and wait. I'm in the distance looking
for what's left of a car accident from
the night before last. A shredded tire,
shortness of breath, a shirtsleeve
torn in half. I expect to find a shoe
in the tall grass. There are always
so many shoes on the side of the road.
Every time I get to this part of the dream
I wake up. It's like I take my whole body off,
so that I don't get lost in the wreckage.

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Copyright © 2020 Nicole Santalucia All rights reserved
from The Book of Dirt
NYQ Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission