Dream Journal Five Poems
By Jane Freiman
Contents I. Maximalist Manifesto in Glue and Skin II. A poem about bows III. Dream Journal IV. Camp(ing) V. You can buy squishies online
MAXIMALIST MANIFESTO IN GLUE AND SKIN DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT LINE BREAKS. I CANNOT CHOOSE WHICH SLIPSTRAND TO SEVER. INSTEAD, I’LL LET THE WORDS BRUSH THE EDGES OF THE PAGE. LIKE A ROOTBEER FLOAT, OR A LOUD WOMAN. SPILLING OVER, BUT NOT YET ONTO. I WANT TO THINK TINY AND WRITE BIG. TO PLASTER MYSELF TO A BUILDING. A BANK PROBABLY. COLD STONES AGAINST MY ASS. FLASH IS SUBSTANCE. AND ALL SUBSTANCE IS EITHER PAIN OR JOY. I WILL DECOUPAGE MY HANDS TO THE FACADE AND IMMOBILIZE MYSELF TO THE EVERCHANGING. SKIN TISSUEPAPER TACKYSTUCKNESS. SO THAT MY BODY CAN BE BOTH VESSEL AND FILLING. A CONTAINER CONTAINING ITSELF AND OTHERS. MY PARAPETIC ARM BENT TO MEET. LIPS OF SHELLACKED STONENESS NUMBED AND PARTED. TO HOLD.
A poem about bows I started to write a text, but didn’t send it. “Won’t you thread through me until we form a pink satin bow? Plastic and fleshy and” That’s where I stopped. A person can be a bow (when that person is multiple and entangled, two loops interlocking, an interloper at the cross, twisting to a desire). So can two plants, reaching across a windowsill. Toward one another or maybe the sunlight. And a sweater is a bow, too, if you count the individual strands (one, two, more) breathing and rising in their stretchy webs of embrace.
Dream Journal One. Particular Knowledges “If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury; then we give up the core—the fountain—of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds” -Audre Lorde, Poetry is Not a Luxury
Not to feel is to not know. Last night I dreamt that I knew how to solve the climate crisis and ensure a just transition. When I woke up, I realized there were actually only a few things I know (though there are many more that I have felt). I know the names of the flowers in my childhood backyard-—hydrangea, dogwood, peony, hyacinth. I know how to hold a chicken securely so it doesn’t fly away. And I have always known that nothing is a lot to ask of someone you love. I know what you are feeling by the size of your eyes when our gaze aligns. Sure, I never fully know—that is the point—but I can approach that knowledge, just as I approach you—that is also the point. Sometimes I think into a notebook: is the rage I nurture in my belly helping anyone? I do not know how to universe, but I am trying very hard to learn.
Two. Florist in the living room We stitched ourselves together in that living room in that sunlight. And Florist was playing. You asked if my skin might burn from that hot sun through that latticed ice. Dancing slowly then kissing then fucking in that sun. I turned my head and thought of the way my hair shifted in that light. I am vain like that, but only sometimes. When I got up to pee, I felt my skin in the mirror. I saw my face, a dream face. Later that day, when I was peeing again you read a poem to me from that big stupid book you love. Me in the mirrorskin searching for your hand.
Three. Neatly Edges Alice keeps her pantry neat. She lines up all the boxes exactly to the edge of the shelf, moving rhythmically. The jars filled of preserves are arranged precisely. Tender fruit kept tender. When Alice works quickly, lasting sweetness is no longer just a myth. Made-soft butter spreads to the just-edges of each toast slice. Graham crackers break perfectly on perforated lines. Eggshells separate uneventfully into two even pieces, the yolk slugging out in-between. Well, to make a long story very short, one day something happened. An earthquake, specifically. Canisters, boxes, dense cylindrical bags shifting uneasily. A jam jar neatly edging the shelf. Now falling. And another and another. Sweetness on the floor, cupped in curved shards. When Alice cries, each tear waits for the last to finish its journey before beginning its descent. Parallel metallic lines cutting through powdered skin. She is quiet and keeps her breaths even and regular. One jar sits still on the shelf. If this last one were to fall, it would crack exactly in half.
Four. Skin/Empathy “She has diffuse nerve pain along the surface of her skin which no doctor understands, pain she says makes her skin feel like crinkly, burning Saran wrap. We look at her skin together as she describes this pain” -Maggie Nelson, Bluets
He responded to the meme, “Maybe empathy is bound up in anxiety.” And I agreed. It can be hard to separate intentions if you don’t think about it too much. And thinking too much is overrated. And like anxiety, empathy centers the self. It subjectifies, self-congratulates. And it is always defined by impossibility. An impossible possibility that looms. I look at your skin through the phone and say that there’s still a lot to be gained in the attempt. Let me hold you in my skincloth, if only to prove that I am pure enough to do it.
Camp(ing) If Marie Antoinette went camping, I bet she’d make a blueberry cobbler in a dutch oven over the fire and pitch teeny tiny tents in her hair and lots of fits all day long. I bet she’d catch a trout in a little stream with a wooden pole and have her photo taken (portrait mode) in the stream and maybe later she’d perch on a stump and pucker her lips and crease a book open to where she happened to leave off just sitting there in sultry pastel grumpiness.
You can buy squishies online 1. Everywhere I go, all I can see is mothers and daughters. My mother has a pizza dough belly, soft and stretchmarked. I used to point it out, squeeze it, to remind us both that this is where I once existed, that I am one of the three reasons her belly droops in graceful sashes. I pressed my toddler hand into these folds, hoping they might disappear me into her once more. 2. That winter I was quite sad. The custard comes in beautiful cylinders that shiver when you tipped them out of the plastic shell. I dug my spoon in and it tastes like a grayish purple on my tongue. The spoon reliably carves its hollow. Sometimes I wonder, can’t we ever experience our pain without having to learn from it, too?
3. There is a hand resting on my stomach, on the warm black velvet, pulsating with it velvetly, skin bumpy like velvet, grass cool like hot velvet. The hand on my belly is my hand. I won’t know its exact give and take, the way its folds sink and grow and sink and grow. If I can see a leaf falling from a tree, can notice its curve like a hip, like my hip that I inspect in the mirror, that aches, maybe then one day I too could have a human body.
Author Bio Jane Freiman is in her third year at Brown University, where she studies Comparative Literature and American Studies. She likes walking with purpose and speaking without aim.