Northern Spark: Captured Dreams

CAPTURED DREAMS Captured Dreams was made in the course of one night during Northern Spark 2012, June 9–10 from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

Northern Spark is an active celebration of the creativity of artists and the creative programming of cultural organizations.

To make this magazine, Paper Darts set up a workstation in the commons at The Loft Literary Center. This project was committed to translating dream writing into one cohesive magazine that captures the events of the evening in its pages. All submissions were accepted—making this magazine one of the most inclusive, collaborative, and receptive publishing projects evvveeer. Enjoy!

PAPER DARTS STAFF: JAMIE MILLARD, Executive Director MEGHAN MURPHY, Editor-in-Chief and Lead Designer COURTNEY ALGEO, Editorial Director HOLLY HARRISON, Senior Editor and Community Manager LINDSAY LELIVELT, Editorial Intern MATT BEACHEY, Marketing Intern TRACY MUMFORD, Marketing and Editorial Volunteer CHRIS OIEN, Dream Transcriber

SPECIAL THANKS TO THE LOFT LITERARY CENTER:

Published by Paper Darts © 2012

TANNER CURL ARI EDES JOCEY HALE HANNAH HOLMAN CHRIS JONES MANDY LEUNG EDWARD MCPHERSON DANIEL MORTENSEN BETH SCHOEPPLER REBECCA SCHULTZ

I found the sun bound at the top of the stairs, shining still, evaporating his own tears. Believe me, I wanted to free him. Let him go, I almost said, in the warm, soft light.

PHOTO BY Rose Norris WORDS BY CHRISTIAN DAHLAGER

WINNING PHOTO ENTRY

UNTITLED UNKNOWN

OTHER PEOPLE’S DREAMS are inherently uninteresting.

MY LEFT EYE by david Mendez

I was born half blind Doctors first thought it was a cloud Doesn’t matter the theories Because I see pretty well on my right Enough to process photographic images of an angry planet At least on this hemisphere Enough to store in my memory bank the faces of loved and forgotten ones Names I will sometimes forget My right vision would bear witness To the atrocities of so called human nature The scaring of people The names of those enjoying speaking In hateful tongues I would read of crimes gone without resolved Displacement of seasons My right eye has seen both sides of this experience While my left eye stays asleep It is in constant state of dreaming Always looking to the past Finding hidden rage Lamenting, paranoid of the light Perhaps my left eye is in the other world that never crossed over Seeking a calm effect for a turbulent train of thoughts Uncovering answers in a blink or Capturing stories Maybe my left eye is an alter ego In a metaphysical sense Paralyzed, hypnotized, and out of reach I could describe it as dark and beautiful Maybe it could carry superpowers

My left eye could see beyond your front It could catch the disgust behind the fake smile The intent of words It will see the ugly side of things my right eye will refuse to glance to My left eye is screaming at the silence Revisiting old wounds, Taking me back to turning points Not letting go of what I have forgiven It is the tourniquet to being overcome By the sorrow that wanders with us My left eye forever clouded in fear Anxious of fate Wandering for a remedy Wandering for familiarity Wandering for a last embrace My left eye is my balance Watching for another Watching for an echo To meet it halfway To lift away its blindness

A LOUD GREEN DREAMING HEID E. ERDRICH

While I am dreaming laundry flops noisily in the dryer, tumbles into a vividness: drum and thunder, fragrant wetness.

We run a green path, swim a river brown as root beer, sleep curled together where stars stoop, kiss our lids, lift us slightly-We startle.

We tumble.

I catch you, my girl.

When I wake there’s a note in two inks, one green, embellished for emphasis: Wake up Sleepyhead!

Don’t Fall Back.

Drum and thunder cease with a beep.

I gather armfuls of cloth, still aware of your warmth, holding you near, dream music in my ear, tumble of your pockets full of green lint and polished rocks. I promise: We come back to earth, every time, but the last time.

Go ahead, I can catch you, every time until the last time.

In between, dear, our dreams mean to make us learn to love the fall.

IF INTROVERTS WERE IN CHARGE

BY MICHAEL KIESOW MOORE

If introverts were in charge, silence would be respected, no longer merely space that must be filled.

People could only speak once they have given deep thought and know that they will not waste anyone’s time with their gift of speech. Everyone would make sure the shyest person gets to have a say.

Life would slow down. We would make time to savor present moments.

No one would have to force a smile for a photograph ever again. Instead, we would prize the photos that most look like our inner selves.

You could walk away from someone and none would take offense, for everybody knows that you’ll be back when you’re good and ready to be around people again.

Extroverts would find secret places where they could be themselves in all their boisterousness, and then would feel guilty afterwards.

Art and music classes would be required in school. Business majors would be frowned upon.

Intuition would rule the day. No single act will be made until everyone checks to see what their still, small voice says. If you are caught using logic, they’ll call you lame.

If introverts were in charge, the greatest lesson we would teach would be the knowledge we already know at the very core of our being: that each one of us is brother and sister to one another. Every action we take – personally, nationally – must flow from that understanding.

If introverts were in charge, a poet somewhere in the world would desperately write a poem titled: If Only Extroverts Ruled the World.

MATT BEACHEY

COLE SARAR

UNTITLED PAUL FOSTER

I can understand the brain using sleep time to process information and organize itself, but what’s more mysterious is the emotional content of dreams. I often dream of people I admire from afar in life and, generally, we are doing something utterly mundane in the dream world. Most recently, I dreamt of Morrissey in this way. In a realm with no rules, where I control everything that happens, Morrissey and I were simply sitting on the curb of an empty, urban street. It was hot and Morrissey was wearing shorts, which I found odd because he’s not the kind of guy who would wear shorts in life. In this dream, we are dear friends and it takes me a while, upon waking, to realize the scene is dream and not memory. Yeah, it’s sort of disappointing. And, in this way, my brain creates emotions of heartbreak. But why? Perhaps it’s wish fulfillment. I could have told that it was a wish of mine to share a Slurpee with Morrissey on a hot summer day, but who knew some part of me also wishes he would take his friendship and leave me with grief? When I perfect my lucid dreaming technique, I’ll force him to remain seated as I shuffle off—no matter how hard he cries.

Most recently, I dreamt of Morrissey in this way. In a realm with no rules, where I control everything that happens, Morrissey and I were simply sitting on the curb of an empty, urban street.

P-Word Alyssa Bluhm

What’s the name of that diamond-shaped dimple between your nose and your upper lip? I know I’ve read it somewhere before and even looked it up a couple of times. I think it starts with a “p.” Whoever came up with that p-word should have made it easier to remember.

It’s that dimple that collects sweat in such an unflattering way. When it overflows, salty sweat spills into my mouth and it tastes like stale tears. But it almost never does that because I always wipe it off right away. Sweating in public feels undignified.

But I have that dimple. Some people think eyes are the best part of a human’s face, or the nose, or the jaw. But that dimple is so intricate and so simple at the same time. I always catch myself staring at them.

The depth or the width of that dimple adds so much character to people’s faces. It pulls everything together, so the mouth isn’t just pointlessly floating around. What if that dimple is really a vestige of a body part that anchored the mouth to the face, to the nose?

When people don’t have that dimple, I think they’re robots. Lips aren’t worth kissing without that dimple. I won’t waste my time on cold, boring robot kisses. I would skip the lips and go straight for the dimple if I didn’t mind being lonely forever.

Phrasing it that way makes the dimple sound like a sailor. But without knowing the name of it, that dimple really could be anything.

I won’t waste my time on cold, boring

HEAVEN’S BASEMENT Michael Crossan

A breath on the bedroom window. Ruth scratches boo with a fingertip.

“Keep us,” she whispers.

Salt mist dusts the ash and oak in The Good Shepherd Centre’s tulip gardens. A gravel path leads to the road.

Eastward, dour clouds scarf blue hills.

Far streetlights twinkle. A fairy migration, thinks Ruth.

To the north, amber lamps on Erskine Bridge’s high cables blink in a mute grey sky.

Tame footsteps, Grace joins Ruth at the window. She suckles a red zipper collar, a collar teat, collars mothering since the cot. “Dreams hurt,” says Grace.

“I ignore sleep.” Ruth watches the bridge, stark iron gate stretched over the river Clyde, a goliath mantis, prayerless.

“I’m spooked.”

“Tell me the dream.”

Arms folded, Grace rests her cheek on Ruth’s shoulder. “You were in hospital.

I came to visit. The hospital was on a hill. It had windows. Big windows. Like doors. Bigger than doors. Hundreds of windows. Stairs led up to the building.

I tried to run. But I was stuck. Stuck on the step. People stood at the windows.

Old gray people. I knew they were dead.

Then it was you and me. Every window, you and me. We had no eyes. Our sockets were black. Empty. Our hair looked like it had never been combed. I woke crying.”

“Black sockets?”

“Empty.”

Ruth cuddles her friend. “Poor babes.”

“Your heart is loud.”

“I’m happy.”

In a portal cabin at the gate a bald watchman folds a newspaper, slides open a window.

“Jackets, ladies.”

“Hat, mister,” says Grace.

“My skull’s immune to the cold.”

“Doubt it,” says Ruth. “You’re red as a knob.”

“Cheeky bitch. Hope it rains.”

“Evil man.” Grace wags a finger.

“Fry in hell.”

The watchman winks. “I’ll wait up for you.”

“Thanks dad,” says Ruth.

“Dad, my bellybutton.” The watchman shuts the window, returns to his paper.

On weekends, boy racers park near the gate revving souped Fords. Cabs to funland. Prize cabins for famished girls. Today is Sunday. The street is silent, damp, barren. A ghost road. The girls link arms, apparitions, walk on.

“You haven’t said much about home,” says Grace. “Was it a nice visit?”

“Aunt Flo was quiet.”

“Probably worried about something.”

“I’m her worry.”

“Maybe she’s planning a party for your sixteenth.”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“Guessing.”

“I had a party once,” says Ruth.

“Nice.”

“I was four or five. Cousins were

there. We had balloons.”

“Nutter doesn’t remember my birthdays. Not one.”

“She’s sick. Schizophrenia’s a disease. I think.”

“She’s the disease.”

“At least you met her.”

“Wish I hadn’t.” Grace coughs, dredges, spits. “I always liked the thought of her.”

“You needed to meet.”

“She didn’t know me. Her own daughter.”

“It’s a disease.”

“Junkie drunkie nutter.”

“Grace.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

“That’s what Tony said. He died lost.”

“Tony belonged to you.”

Bishopton town centre, a tarmac piazza, four teenage boys hooded in tracksuits play footie with a cola can. The girls pass and play stalls. A lank hoodie sits on a graffiti carved bench.

“They’re from the home,” hoodie mutters.

“Taking your fleas for a walk?” yells a beak face.

Ruth squeezes Grace. “Ignore him, babes.”

A chin scarred skinny stalks the girls. “Brollies, dollies. It might rain.”

He high fives beak. “You’ll get a wash.”

“Remember soap?” Beak bends, hands on knees, larynx rattling.

“Muck necks.”

The girls jog. “Inbreeds,” shouts Grace, shiny hair wild in a gust.

Up a cobbled lane the girls halt outside a kebab shop. Pungent aromas spice their nostrils. Lames empty bellies.

Memories flash, alive, fireside curry nights. Soul supernovas.

“Funny that,” says Grace to no one.

Ruth forages a cigarette from her zipper pocket, flicks a Bic lighter, orange flared face. She inhales, smoke drizzling thin from her nose.

“Last one?” asks Grace.

Ruth nods. “Share it.”

They smoke in turns, keen drags, passing the fag. Grace takes a last draw, a precious breath.

“Wish we had money.” Grace stomps the butt under a tired trainer.

“Smells yummy.”

“A large donor.” Ruth pops her lips. “With tons of onions.”

“Mushroom pakora.”

“Chicken wings.”

“Stop it, Ruth.”

A man exits the shop, family meal box, drags his eyes. Swaggers to a sleek four by four. The fat wheeled guzzler pulls away, the man staring, bloat with revulsion.

Grace sits on the pavement, ties a shoelace. “Nice hello.”

“He’s a stink.” Ruth toe pokes the curb. “Pigs arse shite.”

“Wonder if he has a daughter?”

“Daddy’s girl.”

“I was a baby once. Funny that.”

Along the road a church service ends, congregation flooding the square. The girls fuse in the sedate flock, red and lime zippers luminous in a beige spill.

“Excuse me, lass.” The old lady taps Ruth’s arm. “Have you seen my Malcolm?”

“Sorry, I don’t know him.”

“You don’t?” Pencilled eyebrows lift. “He’s an inspector.”

“Sorry.” Ruth shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe he’s in the church.”

“Don’t be a goose. Malcolm hates church.”

“Are you all right, missus?” asks Grace. “Shall I get the priest?”

“Mother.” A neat man cuts between the girls, smells like custard. “I told you, wait.”

“She’s looking for Malcolm,” says Ruth.

“Hmm.” “They’re angels, Malcolm.”

The man guides his mother to a car, helps her into the backseat. He turns, salutes the girls, a finger salute, middle finger.

Elbows looped, the girls weave out of the crowd, walk on, walk on. Close, worn, cold on the pavement.

“She was nice,” says Ruth.

“Ditty.”

“Ditty nice.”

“Oldies are always nice,” says Grace.

“He was a stink.”

“Shite.”

“Pigs arse shite.”

Shivering, Grace nestles in. A road sign reads half a mile to the dual carriageway. Traffic picks up. Cars, vans, trucks moan past. Exhausts spew black smoke, rising sour in the dusk. On the grass carriageway embankment, Ruth squats, retches.

“Shit.” Grace pats her back.

“Should have eaten something.”

“I’ll be ok.” Ruth folds on her knees, vomits bile.

Grace massages her neck. “Dump it up, babes.”

Heaving, trembling, Ruth pukes. A yellow pool, fizzing, bubbling, cosmic.

“Chuck it out.”

Another sore retch, slime threads swinging.

“All up?”

Ruth claws the dirt. “I’m done.”

She rests on her knees, sucking, spitting, blowing.

“Take your time, babes.”

“Fucking grotty.”

Grace strokes her hair. “Feel better?”

“Much.” Ruth rises, sleeves her mouth. “I nearly fainted.”

“Maybe we should wait.”

“It’s nothing to do with that. You were right. We should have had lunch.”

“I couldn’t. I felt sick all day. Hungry now though.”

“Me too. I’d dog a kebab.”

“Freak. You spew your guts, now you could eat a sheep.”

“Weird isn’t it?”

They walk on, zippers shut at the chin, lilac cheeks. Rain hits, dies. A winged gull squeals. The girls peep at each other, shy away, wishes bleeding. A vehicle’s horn blasts. They walk on, walk on.

The bridge is there. A van slows, parks on the moss bank.

“Here we go.’ Ruth nudges and tugs. ‘Paedo patrol.”

The door window rolls down, a husband, father, grandpa. “Want a lift?”

“No thanks,” says Grace.

“Anywhere you want.”

“We’re out for a walk on the bridge,” says Ruth.

“I can run you.”

“It’s right there.” Grace points, face crunched.

“I can run you.”

The girls strain arms, walk on, walk on. “Worm,” says Ruth.

“Wonder if it has a daughter.”

A stair leads to the bridge’s paved walkway. “Last one up’s a fart.” Grace flits up the steps, a nimble foal. “I can taste the sea,” she shouts.

A truck grumps past. “What?”

“The sea. Taste it.”

“I love that.”

“Makes you hungry.”

“Starving Annie.”

“I’d kiss a shit for a fish supper.”

“Don’t, Grace. I’ll be sick again.”

“Sorry, babes.”

They walk on, walk on, walk on. Higher.

Elevated. They stop, lean on the chest high railing. One hundred and twenty feet below, broad black water swells, falls, claps.

“Choppy isn’t it?” Ruth gobs a frothy blob. “It’s not the sea.”

“Smells like shells.”

“Maybe it is the sea.” Ruth squints at distant peaks, hair a windy mess.

“Grace.”

“What, babes?”

“Do you think aunt Flo is planning a surprise party?”

“Probably sorted it weeks ago.”

Ruth kisses Grace’s cheek. “Thanks, babes.”

They climb the rail; tread a girder, balance tiptoed.

Horns blare, the girls hug. “Do you think God’s real?” asks Grace.

“There’s a Devil. We know that.”

“Mr. Stink.”

“Mr. Shite.”

“Pigs arse shite.”

“So there must be a God.” Walk on, they step, angels homeward.

THE DREAMS OF ALEX LAUER ALEX LAUER I had a body dream waterfall skin redwood limb forest fingers and toes all over the sand.

I had a clockwork dream but the gears were oiled with blood the clock tower dark and red.

I had a lightning dream plucking it from the clouds planting it next to the sunflowers and the dandelions.

I had a trap door dream falling and falling and falling and bones shooting into my chest slicing organs open inside.

IN THE SHADOW OF BOYS IN BLOOM

BY PATRICK NATHAN

It was before he felt his blood sing— before that fall into the gnarled pathology of adolescence. His grandfather gave him a condom. A girl is like a flower, he said. He held it like a gun that could shoot without warning. He trembled like a boy.

He was a boy— twelve and frail as a leaf. He could sing like a taut harpstring and shoot laughter past the stars, the pathology of touch beyond his knowing, flowers and their shadows alien until a dream found him and detonated in the night. It woke him with a groan. He became another kind of boy, in want of each petal’s dew no matter who the flower, in search of new ways to make his body sing.

He found reasons to be lonely—a pathological lover of the dark, shooting his dreams into the black air, one shot after the other until he asked himself about metaphors and their pathology.

If girls lean toward the sun what are boys?

In what stories or songs are we ravished as rich and whimpering flowers?

He was a flower—

nineteen and changed by all the shots arching ivory in the night, all the dreams that sang beneath each shudder. If you asked him if he’d loved he’d look away like a boy, like a child lost to a lawless dream’s pathology.

Then he loved. He succembed to that pathology.

He met a man who smelled of flowers and there split open on his sheets he was a boy electric, bleeding like a lily, shooting truth and its agony with a startled cry. It left him bare of want and in that dark he sang: What godless lost pathology is this that sings for me, a flower taken by a thief, and him so kind to me? That boy sank with a sigh like a shot.

UNTITLED L.C. BURKHALTER

I often wish that I could remain in my dreams, or at least bring some aspects of them into my waking life. My dreams are quite varied. One moment I am a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, the next I am planning a major heist with a group of rogues, including a swashbuckling ferret. I have fought serial killers and troll hags, hid from abominations among giant mythos-tainted goats, and hitchhiked with intergalactic truckers. Through all these variations there is one theme, adventure, and one common element, my extraordinary confidence and optimism. I have a sense of well-being and power. If I need to defend my brother from an enraged ex-heir who is trying to kill him for usurping his throne, I feel confident in my swordsmanship and am not surprised when I handily behead the fool and watch his body fall into the royal pool which we had been dueling around. Even in my worst nightmare, I live through the towering horror plucking me from where I cowered in a corner and brought me to a filthy encrusted toilet to vomit upon me over the teeming pool of it until I flowed through its fingers in a bloody, frothing, chunky wave, even after that on the other side of the demonic plumbing I escape and

use my power to create a bomb on the pursuers’ mad house paddy wagon and the dream ends as I ride a train into the sunset.

In my dreams I am decisive and powerful. My waking life robs me of all. I cannot protect anyone the way I do in the dream. I try to protect them from the harsh words or the depression they face but I cannot behead feelings or false friends. I have nowhere to hide from the demons of self-doubt, no group of scrappy survivors or swashbucklers to support me.

My life is good. It has its little sadnesses and bursts of pleasure. Except that in my dreams I feel that I am so much more, I have saved lives in my sleep. I have narrowly escaped death countless times. I can travel anywhere and be with everyone I love, they will never leave my side.

...in my dreams I feel that I am so much more...

One moment I am a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, the next I am planning a major heist with a group of rogues, including a swashbucling ferret.

UNTITLED

MARLEE LEEBRICK-STRYKER The strangest dream I’ve ever had was from when I was five or six. I was camping outside but my only piece of gear was a wool blanket. There was grass under my head and the sky was massive. There were hundreds of stars but none of them were in constellations. It was like a smashed vase.

Just as I was lying out to fall asleep, a giant cartoon frog came out of nowhere.

When he saw me, his face broke into a watermelon grin and he waddled over to me with a jaunt in his webbed feet. He picked me up and lifted me high over his head.

He carried me to a giant hole and tipped me in.

I crashed hard into my bed. Even though my legs felt crushed, I was happy. To this day, I haven’t passed a frog without giving him a grin.

There were hundreds of stars but none of them were in constellations. It was like a smashed vase.

RANDOM MUSINGS ERICA BERGLUND

If there is such a thing as dreamwalkers—people who can travel from dream to dream, manipulating their own and others’ subconsciousnesses, communicating with other dreamwalkers as if in an everyday conversation—do these people ever get any real rest?

The body’s need for sleep is a strange thing—one can lie down and not move and close one’s eyes and think of nothing—but it really does no good unless one actually loses consciousness. And so, if one’s dreams are too active, verging on the conscious, it will be detrimental to one’s health.

With that in mind, would the superpower of dreamwalking really be that great?

We push ourselves nowadays to do so much. If we could continue to work, even in our sleep, would we?

Maybe being able to control our dreams would be a very, very bad thing. We might never get any rest. Or we might never want to wake up and leave the dreamland—a world over which we have complete control.

I guess we all need a little random crazy…

...there is such a thing as dreamwalkers—people who can travel from dream to dream

UNTITLED JESSICA FRANCK

My brother and I had the same Freddy Krueger dream. Seriously, we told it tit for tat in the kitchen the next morning, so we couldn’t lie.

TRUTHFULLY Luke Nolby

This darkest heart force its hand did rip me forward what could make you scream?

DREAM SURFER

SUSAN KOEFOD The location of my favorite dream is a glistening hill, covered in emerald grass and a glassy waterfall sliding, cascading down the gently rolling hill.

I stand at the top of the hill and see the water rushing down the hill. I take one step and begin to slip, slide then surf down the glassy hillside. I’m falling, sliding, surfing down my hillside of dreams.

UNTITLED UNKNOWN

If one of my dreams took place inside a novel, I hope it’s something really sleepy and on a beach, or involving wonderful, sensuous travel to a foreign place, possibly set in another time…

A RECURRING DREAM UNKNOWN

I’ve had recurring dreams all with the same theme of me being “up” somewhere and trying to get down, but it’s always risky. When I take the step, or leap, the situation morphs dangerously. The first time, I was on monkey bars with darkness all around, and I wanted to climb down. To do so I had to let go, jump, and land on a bar down and over, hoping my shoes—some pastel-striped tennies from my childhood with smooth worn bottoms—wouldn’t slide off the bars. I woke as I let go and jumped.

MANY future dreams were of me on various staircases, wanting to go down. The stairs would shrink or shift and I’d always have to just try to step, jump, content to make any headway. As I jumped or whatever I’d wake up.

There were dreams where I’d be waiting to descend a spiral staircase. When I started the stairs all pulled in and I was on top of a high stack with no room to step.

The last one of its kind was in my childhood church, Hope Lutheran. The floor was glossy and colorful, then turned into a rocky cliff with jade and other jewels and minerals in it.

As I started descending, it got really jagged and steep with no places to hang on.

I woke up.

ROCHESTER BLAKE IVERSON

The longest dream I ever had started with me walking out the door of my parents’ house. It took me several minutes to figure out what was different—my hometown had been relocated to a cloud. The ground still looked like streets and grass and sidewalks, but everything was slightly bouncy. I walked to the hills on the edge of town where I met my “friends”—two guys I ate lunch with in high school and a Freaks and Geeks era James Franco. From our vantage point we could see the earth thousands of feet below. Our discussion was very practical: were the structures safe? If we dug a hole would we fall through? Did the cloud’s shape truly reflect the various crags and nannies of the city’s limits?

After some contemplation we decided the best place to answer the question about digging was a cemetery. Geography is warped and the graveyard is less than a block from the hills. On the way, we encountered a pint-sized TV weatherman who tells us that the weather is always sunny and 70 degrees and fifteen thousand feet. “It’s like San Diego,” he says.

The graveyard has been replaced by New Orleans-style above ground tombs. We are stamped. We go get pizza at a place that went out of business in 1995. I wake up craving a taco pizza.

I walked to the hills on the edge of town where I met my “friends”—two guys I ate lunch with in high school and a Freaks and Geeks era James Franco.

I walked to the hills on the edge of town where I met my “friends”—two guys I ate lunch with in high school and a Freaks and Geeks era James Franco.

UNTITLED LAURA TURPIN

I was pregnant, I was in labor, and I was running through the building searching for a place to have my baby.

I ran into a locker room, but people were in there stealing from the lockers and getting naked. I ran through and out.

Desperate, I rushed into a gang shower. The water was spraying everywhere: in my face, under my feet, on my pregnant belly. The other people in there didn’t seem to mind, but I felt like I was drowning. I threw up my hands and left.

Eventually I found a small dorm room. It was far from ideal, and had several people looking on, but I was out of time.

By the time I gave birth, the baby was no longer important.

I cried out, “I tried and tried to find a place of responsibility, but all I could find was emptiness!”

I was pregnant, I was in labor, and I was running through the building searching for a place to have my baby.

UNTITLED MARY HARROLD

My dreams are random, with no deeper meaning to them, except for the recurring dream I seem to have.

I rarely recall my dreams. I think it is because I have insomnia and take a lot of psychotropic medication to help me sleep.

The dreams I do have are more like nightmares, like the recurring one about the pain of the blank page. Unable to write one word. Full of inertia and no imagination. “Think, imagine, be creative,” I tell myself in a stern inaudible voice. Nothing.

Somehow the words come and I write several pieces of poetry or memoir about family, culture, and history.

My dreams are random—because this recurring one is the only one I ever remember. The others are lost to the drugs I use to sleep. Yet I need the drugs even more than the deeper meanings my dreams may give me. Sad, really. But I think my nightmare does turn into a dream, because I am able to write time and time again, which is the dream I most covet.

“. . . this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being.”

—Adrienne Rich, “Pieces”

UNTITLED

CAROLYN DUSSAULT I was in a combination of a bookstore and a sort of mystic store. It was my turn to get my aura cleansed. Many people, including my father and sisters, were sitting around me on pillows.

The woman who was going to do the cleansing looked to me with a friendly smile and suggested that I take off all of my clothes. I remembered feeling good about my body and happy about being allowed to be nude in public. I stripped and sat across from the woman on the pillow. Right as she was about to start, my socks were back on my feet and I took them off again. More and more as I took my clothes off they went back on by themselves. I got up to restrip and restrip and missed my turn.

ERIC BEST A swirl of ripples jolts my urban ennui in to fruition. Like late night TV my mind is LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION. A man in a black suit sits at a solid oak desk. He shuffles a stack of papers habitually. The prompter of my dream spews the lyrics of a David Bowie song that I heard for the first time the night before.

The tone of the man sounds familiar.

In a moment of lucid realization, I find the man has turned into my father.

DOMINIGUE WINDERS

I am floating in a raft going upstream on a rapid but non-threatening river.

My raft overturns but I have managed to save one of the paddles. I climb back onto the overturned raft and begin paddling it like a longboard.

Suddenly I see movement under the clear water. Giant tortoises are swimming under me going downstream.

The first words I say aloud when seeing the tortoises is “grandfather.�

I am calmed, centered, and feel blessed at the sight.

Dream Drawing Mashup We layered your drawings into one beautiful nightmare

UNTITLED R.V. Moniz Jr. I’m not a dreamer. I don’t dream. Even as a young boy I never woke with tales of adventure. When the sun broke, I simply rubbed the sleep from my eyes, picked my head up from the dresser, and took the first butterfly that came through the window down to the kitchen, where I ate my sister’s beaded moccasins and then went to school. Wait, what?

UNKNOWN I was dancing to the beautiful singing of Tony Bennett, dressed in a flowering tangerine gown. Tony came to me after the song ended and took my arm, speaking seriously to me. He was asking me to come with him. I was in a dilemma: should I go with Tony and see the world with him, or stay with my lover? I was torn and could make no decision.

I woke up and told the dream to my man. I am happy to be here in my world with him and happy to remember my time with Tony now and then.

UNKNOWN The first dream I remember having was when I was three. My family had just told us we would have to move because the state was going to build a road through the middle of our house.

That night I dreamt that it was a Saturday morning and I had gotten up to watch cartoons. I went downstairs, had a bowl of cereal, then had to wait for the cars to go through on the road before I could cross into the living room where I could watch TV. Clearly I didn’t understand we would have to move so they could build the road. Side note: we didn’t end up moving until I was fourteen.

ANTIBIOTIC-INDUCED UNKNOWN

12 HOUR DELIRIUM THE SETUP: Antibiotic-Induced 12 Hour Delirium THEMES: Postcolonialism?

Strangeness of Performance Art? AESTHETIC: Homoerotic THE DREAM: I’m some sort of renegade archaeologist, Indiana Jones-like. I tromp through jungle and part a curtain of palm fronds to reveal a white sand beach, crystal blue ocean. On the beach are twelve albino men standing in a circle. Within that circle is a second circle of men, all of which are black—not dark-skinned, but the color of charcoal. Rhythmic music begins and all of the men start dancing, the circus slipping back and forth past each other.

The drumming accelerates, as do the dancers’ flailings, until there is a musical climax. At this point, all twenty-four men strip off their loincloths, exposing large erections. The circle of black men walk toward the albinos until each penis is crossed against another. The black men begin hovering about four inches off the ground. Now floating, the inner circle begins to rotate, making the erections slap against each other like the spinner on Wheel of Fortune. After a dozen or so rotations, the dream ends with a synchronized 24-man ejaculation.

UNTITLED KASEY PAYETTE In my dreams I communicate with people I’m in love with using childish media like crayons, glitter glue, messy fat pencil, construction paper, etc.

I stuffed a crumpled crayon letter in his P.O. box, smeared on a piece of orange paper with glitter glue, typed up an email written in gobbledygook. I’m not sure whether I got my message across.

UNkNOWN There are some people who believe that the world is not going to end December of 2012. No, they believe that it will simply be the end of life as we know it.

There are some who believe human evolution will take a step forward.

Others believe it will be a spiritual awakening. I like that idea. A spiritual awakening. They say there are children being born with special abilities. Empathy, healing, precognition. Terrifying and thrilling all at the same time.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a little of that. I have dreams of places I’ve been and people I’ve never met…and then I see them or I talk to them. And it blows my mind. I feel like it's happening more and more the older I get.

---

Do you know what I like about dreams?

For a short time I can be without inhibitions. I’m so uncomfortable in my body. I feel like people are watching me all the time, judging me. I’m so self-conscious that I won’t even join in a dance party. But when I’m sleepy I don’t worry about those things. I just am, and it’s enough. At least I think it is.

I wish I could be more free in my real life.

UNTITLED HAIKU UNkNOWN

Sometimes dreams are fun But other times they create A hot bed of fear Bananas are fruit They can go on cereal Or just in your mouth Try not to smash bugs They are just trying to live Just the same as you

CHECK YOUR SWORD AT THE DOOR UNkNOWN

I once volunteered to recount a dream I’d had the night before during my second period AP psych class. Terrible Idea. *** Friends of mine from around the world were gathered together, waiting in line to enter a movie theater. But you had to check your sword at the door.

All the boys had swords. The girls didn’t; they had umbrellas and were allowed to bring those in.

I had a sword, though.

Freud would say—and really anyone would agree, for once—that the swords were clearly a phallic symbol.

No swords in this theater, please.

STEVEN LANG

MN ORIGINAL COLE SARAR

UNTITLED UNKNOWN

The most confusing dreams I’ve had have been ones where an entire normal day of my life has passed and I go to sleep in the dream and wake up in the real world not knowing what day it is, because it feels like an entire day has passed.

But if I were to describe a single dream that confused me I have one that I think about at great length. A few years ago while I was in college I dreamt that I was in film school. One day I’m getting ready for class when there is a knock at my dorm room door. I open it to find my entire family, arms laden with boxes and black garbage bags. Mom tells me that they had to sell the house so they’re going to live with me for a while until they find somewhere new to live.

The next thing I know, my family has piled into my dorm and I am tripping over toys and furniture from my childhood, things my waking self knows we sold years ago. It feels like the walls are closing in with people falling all over each other, and I have to get out.

I grab my purse and find myself going home. I need to understand what happened, my family has moved so suddenly. I still have my key to the

house so I can easily get inside. I walk through the empty house and eventually end up in the basement, where I find a door that has never been there before.

It’s black with a thick frame around a rectangular frosted window. There is no lock, just a handle to pull the door open. My curiosity gets the best of me and I pull the door open.

On the other side is a hallway into a whole other house. When I look back the door is gone and I’m standing in the middle of the strange hallway. Voices drift down the hall to me from what I instinctively know is the kitchen. I start to move toward it but someone is coming in my direction. I duck through the first door I find. I watch through a crack in the door as a man walks down the hall, holding tight to a small boy’s hand. I have never seen the man before, but when he talks I know, somehow, though I can’t explain it, that my father’s soul is in the man’s body.

I watch as the pair disappear down the hall. I have just made the decision to follow when I feel someone else coming my direction, headed toward the room that I’m in. It’s a bathroom and there’s a shower with a curtain. I hide behind it, trying hard not to breathe, when the

light flicks on. I must have made some noise. The person pulls back the curtain and finds me there.

He’s a young man, high school age, and he asks me what I’m doing in the shower as he offers me his hand. He’s laughing as he hauls me up and questions me further. He wants to know who I was and if I did anything for this time. He calls me Sarah and finally I ask him, who’s Sarah? He stares at me a moment, then turns me to look in the mirror. I’m looking into a face that isn’t mine.

I don’t know what the dream is meant to mean but I’m now writing a story about a girl named Bridgette who finds out she has the gift or the curse, depending who you’re asking, to leave her body and jump into another. And the first body she jumps into is the body of another jumper named Sarah.

I have never seen the man before, but when he talks I know, somehow, though I can’t explain it, that my father’s soul is in the man’s body.

HAIKU FOR NORTHERN SPARK

BY MAGGIE WHITMAN

Back sweat and bike lights, Pre-gaming with iced coffees.

My city, at last.

“. . . no one wants to hear what you dreamt about unless you dreamt about them don’t let that stop you tell them anyway and you can make it up as you go.”

—Built to Spill, “Made Up Dreams”

UNTITLED KASEY PAYETTE

She called me with her voice all drunk and asked whether she could crash at my place, phrased: “hey, just wondering if I could come over—just need a place to dry out while—mumblemumblemumblemumble.”

I don’t remember, but I think I turned her down.

Later, in my office building with the lime green dividers, she was dragged screaming from her desk chair by a crew of hitmen and situated on a different chair on the other side of the room. As they held her down, her voice turned into a shrill mechanical screech that made me think of the monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. I had heard about how her voice changed when she was smashed. Crouching under my desk, I turned to my coworker (who was also crouching) and whispered, “That’s the voice.”

LAUREN VAN SCHEPEN If one of my dreams took place in a painting, I’d hope it’d be Monet. Don’t we all need a break from the bustle, a walk in the willows and encroaching weeds? A hazy lazy summer kind of dream. One different from a concrete O’Keefe cityscape or lonely Hopper night walks. My dreams are too often real, too often a manifestation of a task undone, a relationship strained, or an unattainable dream. Those dreams in dreams, those hopes that are momentarily within our grasp…how cruel of the unconscious to give us a taste of what in daylight can never be.

--She dreamed only in the afternoon—the drifting in the lawnchair, the sweaty rest in an unmade bed. Night was the sleep of the dead. Only in daylight.

JAY GABLER Athalon was a sad god, from a forgotten pantheon. He had powers yet, but the feats he effected were attributed to chance, a lone “god,” or illusion. He yearned to once again be worshipped—not even worshipped, just acknowledged. Feared?

He’d take it.

a

Just as he was about to surrender to slumber like Puff the Magic Dragon, Athalon noticed a young girl—bereft, hopeless. Illiterate.

Could Athalon help her? Could he do as gods do, and intervene arbitrarily in human affairs? He took a deep godly breath and thought. He parted the clouds, charged his bolt, and blew the tiniest electrical charge down through the atmosphere into the girl’s brain.

When she awoke from her shock, the girl remembered nothing—but she knew she had to find paper. She ran downstairs and grabbed a pad from its alcove by the telephone. She picked up a magenta crayon and drew, slowly and haltingly, a single letter: A.

NIGHT WATCHMAN, COUNTY GARDEN AND CEMETERY C.I.M. JONES On certain bad weather evenings, when even the teenagers I've been hired to keep out would be crazy to hook up outdoors, one of the many dreams that I never became leaves his post and wanders to a nearby bar.

Inside, it is musty and dim like a train boxcar.

This dream self knows about darkness though.

He's seen enough of the heavy soil— waves of black marl whose marbled weight breaks over bits of clover silk and tilled stem; he's seen enough of the dirty day workers at dusk leaving shovels and holes and long-stemmed roses for him to watch over.

And he's seen himself stumble back toward his post, tripping over the ledger stone of Melissa O. (1961–1996) along the way, the sound of crystal from the vase of white irises he kicks startling him. He's seen his cut hands sweeping away the shards, and must assume, hours later, no one finds his dawn-lit secret among all the buried others.

UNkNOWN I do not write while dreaming. I write while awake. My dreams inform my writing, but mostly I dream of a large audience reading what I write.

ROBYN HENDRIX Recurring nightmare: buried underground, just below the surface, looking at the roots of seedlings. Induces intense, extreme panic and I can never figure out why it’s so scary. Ironically (or perhaps due to subconscious forces I don’t understand) a lot of my art is inspired by plant growth and seedlings.

UNKNOWN I once dreamed that I was leading an army, bunkered in a laboratory, against invading aliens. I kicked some alien ass.

Gingko. It’s amazing what it helps you remember.

Sometimes I dream that I am on a plane and it goes down. Very Castaway. Sometimes I am the soul survivor, sometimes I save the child in the seat next to me.

Always we get rescued. The reunion with my friends is my favorite part. Maybe I need to do a better job communicating with my friends.

THE CYCLONE SURREAL

BY MICHAEL KIESOW MOORE “I don’t want more monoliths.”

—Remedios Varo “Mom!” the little boy called.

“It’s happening again!”

The mother glanced at the kitchen clock.

It had slid off the wall and was now melting down the refrigerator.

“Batten down the hatches,” she said.

“It’s the Cyclone Surreal.

Shut the windows, lock the doors.”

But it was too late.

The front door knob turned into a caterpillar with a monkey’s face.

And the windows decided they did not want to be windows anymore: one became a flying carpet, and another began to run for political office.

Then the rains began, showers of monoliths, littering the front yard with tall obelisks.

“I feel weird” the boy said.

Surreal squalls circled the boy who became a purple cat and leapt onto his mother’s lap.

As she pet the boy’s soft purple fur her left leg stretched and turned into a key. Her head vanished, replaced by clouds and a golden sun.

Her midriff held a box, and inside it was the great spinning galaxy Andromeda.

A phonograph needle settled on the turning galaxy and began to play “Pennies from Heaven.”

The chair danced with the cactus and the vase grumbled, “No one ever asks me to dance.”

Slowly the sirocco winds subsided, the furniture returned to their places, and the window stopped running for political office.

When the kitchen clock slid up the wall the Mother stood up and straightened her dress.

“That wasn’t as bad as last time,” she said.

The boy nodded, and pawed at his purple whiskers.

UNTITLED JOCELYN HALE

Words blend into live music. My dreams come true. Restless sleep simmers silently through the balmy night. Bikes with twinkle lights glide by. A young woman wears a red cape. Susan greets friend after friend as the Mississippi churns below.

Grain elevators illuminated to become towering volumes of books. The city of my dreams is still awake. “I have found you again,” sings the band.

POSTURPAEDIA CASEY PETERSON

You wake, but you don’t really wake at all. Because you have become what you’ve always wished—to be able to never leave your bed!

Alas, the tragic flaw: beds don’t sleep!

Sweet dreams, Comfort Selector

PEACE OF MY MIND CRAIG BENSON CRAIG First, there were the preambles The body, next aching singing Fee-ling.

People arrived, ex-positions were taken away for granted seriously given weight.

Under studies went for all of us.

Free For All

UNTITLED UNkNOWN

I had a sweet dream it tasted like the opening credits to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

HOUSE OF MEMORIES MARISSA LANDRIGAN

When it was time to have a house of my own, I went to my mother. She and my father had once lived in a tiny straw house, which they quickly grew out of, when the babies came starting with me.

But for years it sat as if a monument in the front yard of my childhood home, shaded on the one side by a tall, thin, injured pine and cradled on the other by a low-lying bush that carried small red berries. As a child, I had played in the straw house, but my mother had always told me it could become a real house someday, if I needed it. I never knew if she was telling the truth. She had told me those red berries were poison, but I ate one and hadn’t died yet.

I went to her, and she was sitting at the old dining room table, which has since been moved out of the dining room and into the study. Our friends carved messages into it over the years, teenaged declarations of love for me or my sisters, pictographs and the occasional math problem I tried too hard to solve, my pencil crushing through the thin white paper and embedding the equation onto the table beneath. Sitting with her soft fingers spread over these wooden scars, my mother told me she had packed the straw house away into storage.

A wide, serene smile spread itself across her face. I knew you would be the one who asked for the house, she said. I didn’t need to ask how she knew.

I could already feel the baby inside me,

and she had always know things about me before I did: accurately predicting the first time I ran away, leaving me a note in my backpack dated a week before I packed it. She knew I was ready to take on a family, and every family needs that kind of house, small and made of something strange, like straw.

When she told me that, to rebuild the straw house, I would have to relive all its memories, it didn’t seem so odd to me.

After all, she said, what is a house but a collection of the past of all of the people who have lived there?

She brought me a plastic white bin, a surprisingly mundane storage container, but there was no straw inside. There were talismans, tokens to represent milestones. When I took each one out, she told me, I would see its story. The house would form as I spoke each story out loud.

Nothing in the bin was familiar to me, there was nothing I had owned or touched ever before, nothing I could even recognize as having belonged to either of my parents. All objects were past tense. But I felt a swimmer inside me, and the certainty that he should be born in the house of straw, so once my mother left me and the bin full of random objects alone in a twilight field, I reached in and began to tell stories of which I had no memory.

This is the pink scarf she wore on the night the wind caught her hair and he took her hand on the dark street and asked.

These are the separated vertebrae of the animal he found as a boy.

A construction paper drawing of a dinosaur robot, by their second child, the boy.

A scrap of wood they kept to remember they were in the forest when she died.

A bottle opener for his father.

The antennae that would never stand straight.

A playing card she painted yellow when there was nothing left to give.

I lost myself in the memories of others, reaching deeper and deeper into the bin, far beyond the visible bottom, pulling fragments of the past from tangible objects to reconstruct – a house, a dream house, a straw house built of memories where I would name him Finn.

HOW IMPORTANT ARE DREAMS? SHARBONNO RILEY Dreams are one of the few, special remaining places my soul can make decisions unencumbered by time and space constraints.

Without dreams, I am a machine. With dreams, I am inspired beyond nature.

A PACHUCO’S LOVE STORY (SABOR A MI) DAVID MENDEZ All he wanted was a dance with her That evening in that smokey ballroom in the local neighborhood of any city He carried no Hollywood swagger He was his own element No elaborate suit Just his Sunday best This Pachuco was in a daze as he laid his sights on her The guitaras of the band move the dancers to a slow phase They ease to the rhythm as they past the whispers of on lookers Many nights after.. his homeboys would joke at him Under all the laughter they knew he still dreaming of that dance Our Pachuco was in the rapture of his song, her song... their song They would dance again and other times after Including their first dance at their wedding Like all Chicanos in that barrio they used whatever they knew best to make ends Picking the fields Canning, packing, the rail lines, assembly lines cleaning houses, renting houses Or selling the finest Mexican food this side of the Mississippi At the county and state fairs or backyards Our Pachuco hustled his way around the American myth Their song still replaying in his work His dance partner still in tow.

Like his brothers and old vatos he would talk to on occasion Our Pachuco became a father of a new Chicano generation That hummed his song as an after thought Many hard years, happy years Years of changing winds, years of growth Years of fading, years of wars Years of headlines...

Years since the radios and record players played that familiar tune Still our pachuco still had his partner

To dance away through everything However; heaven was waiting for its turn to dance with his lady It waited through many galas, Saturday nights, and other formals before it got a chance to finally call her.

Before entering the gates beyond our pachuco’s reach She promised him...

“I’ll wait for you in that grand ballroom, Continue our song. I will not be far I will save the last dance for you.”

As swiftly and as angelic as she walked in to his life Our Pachuco’s dance partner quietly made her exit.

With a heavy heart that would hold him Our Pachuco would never sing the same tune Maybe on a special occasion he would wear his best suit still laughed and carried the ol’ swagger He danced a couple times only when it meant something Whether it be a grand daughters wedding; A niece’s quinceniera, a family reunion Special occasions He dance when he heard the voice of his lost one urged him To just get up and dance Our Pachuco felt his legs gain their original strength when he heard the opening bar of the guitar He moved in rhythm not missing a turn or step He looked like the young man in his element In his mind it felt like the old ballroom swirling about him It was the sweet memory that would bring tears to many eyes Our Pachuco’s song in that passed time too never sounded the same New covers of that melody, new voices, new styles made their song foreign to him It abandoned him like the old ballroom he use to frequent in younger days In silent dignity he aged in that time since his partner’s exit Brothers, friends, old acquaintances from the old barrio would leave their dance behind Our Pachuco would be left to carry their breath His heaviest desire was to dance once again with her Tears would console him when he listen to the old records again This music would reflect to him the beautiful life that he was given It was finally one night while we all slept Under the presence of the summer moon Their song was playing next him as he closed his eyes He walked in that new ballroom In the midst of old friends and forgotten family He saw her once again

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

—T. S. Eliot, “Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”

UNTITLED JOEL TURNIPSEED The diaphanous cloud of livery gremlins danced in the Ambiened light beyond the bed. Food Network fever dream pixel haze and the wife—there was a WIFE! Whiskey drip slurred glass like slurred speech like wake like dream like pill like WIFE. Still night apparently and still married—WIFE—and life was like night but still not like sleep, like the hostel sought between covers. Pill bottle TV puppysnare and the diaphanous cloud pulsed between awake and between morning and the wife leaned, loved, mid-winter, calmed everything, leaving not cold, not dark, but still present, here, northern-spark.

Exactly like the first time Their song would center around them Our dancers, our Pachuco reunited with his bride All he ever wanted was a dance with her In his Sunday’s best Her smile They danced to a never ending song Sabor a mi...

To our Pachuco Dios te bendiga

LONGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR MATTHEW SANDVIK

Naked stumbling down an alley. Vertigo swagger tipping the Earth around me. Blood trails splayed along the dirty brick wall. Rusted joints and shredded muscle tissue.

Metropolitan wasteland, endless piles of trash down an endless alley of crumbling walls and too-high fire escapes.

Poison steam rises in mushroom clouds burning holes in my lungs.

searching for me. I burrow beneath the piles of garbage. A secret passage, a green-glowing tunnel hidden from the sky. Belly crawl along the wet concrete, behind the bulging packages of pukescented garbage.

Awake on the longest night of the year.

Burning crushing monolith. The garbage god welcomes me into its land.

Filth speckled tentacles drag me through the endless piles of trash.

Twisted metal slices my bare skin. This is my home now.

My hands are bloody, tiny stinging cuts on my fingertips, the flesh hangs in waving streams. Garbage sludge glistens on my skin, dark streaks of rotting vegetables and mud.

I tunnel down through the refuse, down through the sludge, and deep into the soil where it’s warm. I drink the black life-liquid from the pools in the lower caves.

The garbage piles grow taller and taller.

The walls around me groan and stretch toward the black sky. Brick dust crumbles, broken shards rain on my head.

Glistening television eyes buried in dark soil, watching me always. I cut myself with the broken TV glass, each cut glows brighter than the last.

Street lights burn my eyes, stab my brain. Helicopter spotlight scattering,

Crawling over the junk dunes in the moonlight. I tear open a slick black

package and your scent wafts out like a flower. I sniff through each piece and it’s like painting a picture of you. My inside pieces swirl at the thought of your tastes and smells and squirming bits.

tongues wag and stretch toward me. I tear them down from where they hang.

They screech and wiggle as they dry out and die in a pile. I push my way to the surface.

Convulsions, encased in a green glowing sac like toxic waste. Each movement brings pokes from dull points like quills. Insect body wants its turn.

It’s trying to push its way out of me. I’m building myself into something new.

The awful sunlight burns my open eyes, the sounds of cars and people and music and laughing stab at my ears. I can taste every frequency. Electric cable hums jitters my head. Human voices crushed into droning noises. I can’t understand them anymore.

Millions of shifting voices rolled into an angry clicking ball. Insects calling me on the phone.

“It’s been too long.”

“Don’t come for me yet.”

Lace curtains tossed by gentle breeze.

Fuzzy white sunlight. Perfect human hands wrapped around each other. Her rubbery pink skin shimmers with thick cloudy fluids, her melted face-skin sags and smears across the white pillows.

Our human skin color cascades off our bodies like melting wax. Her insect legs reach for me in waves. Her sallow bug belly shudders at my electric touch.

Sitting in my prison under tree roots reciting long lost poems. Red poison roots from the dirt like fine hairs. They dig through me—burrow into my organs, prod my bones.

I see all the world through this tree, through every tree. Everything tied in infinite connected outlets. Every thought and action and smell and sound rush by in an instant, like dipping your hand in a stream.

I grab the roots by the handful and pull them out of me. Their tiny lapping

I slice my face open on a rock and claw away at the encasing bunches of hanging costume skin. I curl inside my old body and push myself free. The layers of skin peel and tear in long heavy strips. They lay in a quivering heap. I eat them for strength.

I puff my lungs and grow with each breath, my yellowy-pink flesh darkens into shiny black armor as I dry. Long razor quills stretch out behind me.

My soul spills out in oily drops, black poison mist wafts from the dissolving puddles.

This is not going to last.

Spider stride toward her smell.

I can feel her hiding behind the rusty, crumbling basement walls. I crawl through the dirt, tapping and listening for her frightened shifting.

I dig deep into the earth, dragging the house down with me, and suck her out with a great gasp.

Then I drop into the abyss.

COAL MINE PICKLE JAR chAD SMITH

It’s doing nothing for me No reaction Hit the fast forward button Still nothing I can hear the music and sound sped up Hit the fast forward button again Still nothing At this speed he is being rough with her We are in the school cafeteria now I see him sitting there I am happy he is here He is excited to see me too His long blond hair seems clean today Still ratty He is wearing his holey cardigan sweater Striped shirt His chin has stubble and is that?

Yes A smile So rare for him I set my food tray down at his table I ask him what he’s been up to He says it’s been rough for him I say, “I hear you man” He is happy that I have been writing Doing the good work I stop and he looks sad This can’t be You’re not here You blew your head off in a tool shed And then Shed tool a in off head your blew you Here not you’re Be can’t this Sad looks he and stop I Work good the doing Writing been have I that happy is he

I say, “I hear you man” I realize I am dreaming Must try to wake myself up I can’t move If I can scream then that will wake me up I am in my grandparents’ house On the staircase to the basement But this isn’t my grandparents’ house It is a house I have never been in before But I keep coming back to it in my dreams I have woken up in another dream The same house We can climb up and hide inside the walls My mother tells me When she was a girl She had nightmares About a small wrinkled old man Who was like a troll with one long pointy fingernail That he would use to stick in her bellybutton Tickling her bellybutton with his long pointy fingernail And she couldn’t move Couldn’t get away I can’t move I try to move my arms I try to move my legs If I can scream then that will wake me up Do you remember seeing the sun in your dreams?

It is warm I am lying in the field looking up at the clouds You are here with me and you love me again We are happy A warm peace pours over us I hold your hand We should stay here forever I am awake now Damp with sweat He swore to us that he didn’t have a gun And now we know that was a lie

UNTITLED GRETCHEN MARQUETTE This is one of those dreams that I’m not present in, that I’m watching like it’s a movie.

ERIC PATH

There’s a woman sitting at a bar. I think, as the dream is unfolding,“This is the 1800s.” The woman is wearing a green dress with a bodice and skirt. She has a quartz crystal in her hand, and she wants people to pay her to tell their fortunes but nobody is interested. A man sits down next to her. He is interested but not in having his fortune told. In the dream, I think, “She is also a prostitute.” At this point I also become aware there is a cat living in the bodice of her dress. It sticks its face out of a hole where he heart should be.

I remember it was interesting.

The man sees the cat, and seems uncomfortable, but all at once the woman and man are in a dark alley. It’s wet and the light is soft. Everything looks oily and dirty. The man and the woman are kissing. When they stop kissing, the woman holds up the quartz and says,“You’re hoping the cat has become part of me. You don’t want to see it when I take off my dress.”

And then

Oh, what did I dream last night?

Maybe I was breaking out of work and into extreme urban Paris.

Residential urbanity without laws of physics with skyways with excitement (of escape).

Mom? Dad? (Alex Macgillis, alexmacgillis@gmail.com) I’m sitting on a stool in the middle of a large square, surrounded by dayglo colonial-Gilliam buildings. The ground is smooth to touch and the sky is a void. It’s silent and I’m alone. I’m scared. A knife divides my shoulder blades.

I wake up and my back hurts.

I wake up.

YAEL Time and memory have worn away at my dreams, which have become wilted by years of cynicism, rejection, and betrayal.

Perhaps it was the dream itself that was the ideal, like a mystery seed, brimming with possibility.

I see it in my friends and loved ones— where once there was hope, now unspoken desperation. “I’m embarrassed to tell people what I do for a living,” said my underemployed friend. I wish hiring managers saw in him what I do—that ember of hope, the thoughtfulness, pride in his work, striving for perfection.

“I’m not such an up-and-comer anymore,” said a brilliant man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, created a beautiful life—and a family—out of nothing but tragedy and perseverance. I see artists selling their work for mere pennies, masterpieces sitting unframed, or crumpled and thrown away before my very eyes.

“I don’t even want to compare myself to them,” said my drop dead gorgeous friend, who can spin fire and contort her body like a pretzel. My wish for her is that she celebrates what her body can do rather than needlessly obsess about what it looks like and what other people think about it.

Langston Hughes not withstanding, perhaps it is us treading on our own dreams instead of igniting the flame, turning embers into flames and setting fire to the limitations that keep us from fulfilling our potential.

I spent a lot of time feeling mildly jealous of those who are well-connected, when I read their articles based on conversations I started with them in the biggest magazines I know. When I tap my own connections, I don’t celebrate my exposure but rather feel like I’m cheating. Maybe “cheating” is believing the lie that my dreams are impossible, concocting complex excuses when they come into fruition, in spite of it all, like the plant creeping out the crack in the sidewalk, managing to live beautifully, in spite of it all.

Dreaming big and living your dream seems scary, but the alternative—endless banality and drudge work, a slow, sad life of quiet desperation—isn’t exactly peachy, either.

I wish for that spark of hope to bring dreams into fruition, to ignite in each and every one of us, against the grain, raze the walls, kick down the cage if need be, so you do not need to live in silent defeat any longer.

UNTITLED

HARRIS BURKHALTER Okay, yeah, so I had this really strange dream a few days ago. I want to talk about it; I think it’s pretty interesting.

Yeah, I know, a lot of people find those who insist on sharing their dreams to be extremely tedious, but I just can’t help myself. It’s like the one really weird thing that happens to most people on a day-to-day basis—how can I not talk about them? So this was one of the weirdest ones I’ve had recently.

Normally, my dreams do not follow any sort of story, but are mainly sliceof-life type themes with a surrealistic edge. This one almost had a plot. Also, it had nothing to do with me (at least, I hope not—I hate to think what this one might say about my psyche). The scene: a cornfield in some rural section of North America. The cast: three men and a woman dressed as stereotypical hicks. One man, Johnny, is sitting, dejected and utterly despondent, at the foot of a large tree on the bank of a stream on the outskirts of the cornfield.

A crate of dynamite stands nearby. The other three people, Betty Mae, Ronald, and Frank, stand about with concern on their rugged faces. Ronald holds a shotgun. Johnny holds his head in his

hands and weeps. The others try to comfort him to no avail.

“C’mon, Johnny, it wasn’t yer fault,” Frank says, gently.

“You don’t need to do this,” adds Betty Mae. “We still love you.” Ronald shakes his head, his expression grim.

Johnny wails briefly and then, in a shuttering voice, says,“No, no, my friends, I can’t live no more. I just have to die.

You call know I can’t go on now. I can’t go on. I can’t kill myself, you know. If you all still love me, you’ll have to put me out of my misery.”

“No, we can’t do that!” shouts Betty Mae. “You got to!” screams Johnny, his eyes still wet with tears. “Use the dynamite, please, please, I beg you.” The trio argues for a while longer and finally Ronald speaks up.

“You’re like a brother to me, Johnny, and I can’t stand to see suffer. I’ll do it.” Johnny sighs in relief and whispers,“Thank

you, thank you. Do it now.” The others sadly step aside and allow Ronald to put a small pile of dynamite under Johnny.

He lights it and the three run for cover.

BOOM! Poor Johnny, still leaning against the tree, screams in agony, cartoonishly blackened, his limbs all gone. He continues to scream as Ronald leaps up, still hefting his shotgun. “Johnny, oh God, no!” He hesitates a second, then blasts Johnny. The first shot isn’t fatal.

Poor Johnny continues to scream.

Ronald’s second shot blows his wrecked face off and poor Johnny is finally silenced. Ronald, Betty Mae, and Frank stand over the remains of Johnny, regarding him with resignation. He is at least at peace now. Suddenly, cops burst out of the corn, guns drawn.

“Hands in the air!” the police shout.

“Drop the gun!” Ronald quickly drops the gun as the cops handcuff the three.

“My god,” says one officer. “What the fucking hell have you done to this man?

You sick bastards.”

Yep. Weird. No idea where that one came from, it is totally atypical of my usual dreams. The whole thing was played as an absurdist comedy. Normally I am very disturbed by any violence in my dreams, but…the whole scene felt blankly funny.

UNTITLED JAY MCMAHON

So I think as children there is a continuous tendency to feed us kibble.

It molds us. It bends us. It moves us.

It helps us move through society, to fit in, to adapt, to be acceptable, marriageable, manageable. It’s beginning to sound like a goddamn rant. What I’m referring to is the endless carrot and stick game. As children, there are certain expectations. Everyone has to stay in line. Everyone must make normal progress from child to adult. An obvious example is the psychotic phenomenon known as Chuck E. Cheese. Chuck E. Cheese is a pizza place where children play games in a giant arena/arcade and win tickets they can then turn in for prizes designed to go into the next garage sale. While they are doing this, they eat pizza the family dog would shit on; drink endless cups of sugary, caffeinated, over-fructosed syrup water; and eat from the three-item salad bar where the little mewling brats have easy access to play with the tomatoes before putting them back. Spend a little time in one of these restaurants and you see it for what it is: a casino training ground. Several years later, when trying to kick the casino habit as an adult, you can check out Dave & Buster’s, a bar restaurant for adults who can play stupid games and win stupid garage sale prizes.

So that brings me, inexplicably, to the Whirly Art. Whirly Art was not Art. In my school, at the year-end carnival, there would be a Whirly Art Table. (For

the kids with less memory, it was called a booth.) They would take a card, attach it to the spinner, and let children throw paint on it. The wheel would stop and the child would claim his piece of Art. Next! The adult version of this I found on Northern Spark night at MCBA. (Brazen to say, considering where I am, but what the hell are opinions for anyway?) It’s a game where you roll dice from a spurned role playing game. You record your rolls, then you follow them to different signs and get a print on it. You got the next station for your next print. The first station I went to, there were six people in front of me.

It was ten minutes of picking out stencils, re-inking the slate, then pressing your design. I looked around at some of the other stations to see a room full of smiling, exuberant, expectant adults.

Now I’m not positive. Maybe it was the bright lights, the alcohol, the lateness of the hour, but for whatever reason, I was immediately sent back to my grade school Whirly Art and how excited all my classmates were to create—nothing—something that is now undoubtedly in a landfill. I quit after two screen stops, the second of which I pencilled in when the operator was turned away.

My print is a sort of equal sign with a bowling ball in the middle. I don’t know what that means but damn it, it’s exciting. and it will be until the sun comes up.

Brazen, as I mentioned, but I was just thinking about it.

CITY (SLEEP) HANNAH K. HOLMAN From my house in the sky, I breathe in the light pollution. I drink up the moon and close my eyes to dream (of you).

The city is dripping into my hungry veins, it makes my mouth water each time it rains— and I can’t breathe unless my lungs are full of cigarette smoke and heavy hope and a lifetime of (someone else’s) dirty laundry laid out to dry.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever leave this place, if I’ll ever find a familiar face to call home every night where the stars aren’t too bright covered up by the moonlit haze and a drunken daze and the error of my ways and— Could you just hold me a minute longer?

I’d like to listen to the city (sleep).

#NSPK CARL ATIYA SWANSON “Do animals dream?” the octopus asked, looking up from the tentacles tattooed on the passing forearm in the salty night.

“Only of you,” replied the inked-on ocean wave, riding the crest of a shoulder and the breeze over the bridge, “And always in blue.”

UNKNOWN I dreamed I was on a rooftop that was crumbling as though it was made out of sand. Drake (the rapper) was climbing up to rescue me. He had a lot of ladders.

AMBER DAVIS A man stumbled towards me.

I tried to open the door, it said PULL. I pushed.

He said “Who are you?”

I replied in my best fake French accent Maybe you don’t want to know.

I pushed the pull.

“Where are you going?”

Go away.

I pulled the pull.

I climbed the stairs.

I looked for Tanner Curl.

He went home.

Sacre bleu.

CHELSEA BERTSCH I’m so tired but the cafe downstairs is playing Bob Dylan. He’s my born—born in Duluth, the place where I spent my childhood. When I’m sleepy, I think of the ships coming into the harbor, memories of the shipping life on the Iron Range come flooding back to me and Bob’s gravelly voice rings through my ears. I like to think of him traipsing through the cobblestone streets. I recall hoping to run into him, but I had no such luck. When awake, I dream of going back there; to walk around the canal, hang around the lighthouse, and search for Bob Dyland along the streets of downtown.

UNTITLED CHELSEA, ANDREW, AND AMBER If I had a superpower in my dreams, it would be… something like flying but better like a Pop Tart with blueberry flavor I would toast it like champagne on New Year’s Eve bubbles tickling my nose Bubble baths are like napping after sex so blissful and sunset basking in a liminal glow light from a spark of love I’m just a soldier in the army of love my top hat my helmet and my sword my cane my trembling hand, my shod horse that once threw me my mother loved his painted spots painted on by the hands of my father and given to me and forgotten by me then I grew up then I grew old then I woke up good morning, love.

YA YA IT WAS AN AMAZING NIGHT. DAVID BEKKERUS The night was a convergence and light, people, music, and energy. Running here and then being pulled this way and that. It was hard to follow and yet easy to flow with. It was like that dream of being pulled into the painting sitting on the wooden easel next in the kitchen of his condo. It was a city blurry and distorted with yellow splotches representing a girl doing jumping jacks in a flower-shop shaded earth with petals of blue and green and yellow and red. She was the center of the painting bursting with energy in all directions being pulled towards the darker side of the city at sleep. Shadowy digging out of the ground, dug up ground and rising like a spirit on the horizon and luring in sounds and people and energy.

It was in his hapless loping around that he bumped into her and said hello who are you…she giggled and said that patron who brought her daughter to the opening the exhibit at that museum you can’t remember the name of, and this girl pointed at her grandmother trying to get her attention. “YA YA,” the girl yelled, she told you in great deal about her way of acquiring her name…and so it stuck she said, my name is Ya Ya Yellow since was decked out in skinny jeans and glasses that could see past lies and danger that sometimes comes in meeting total stranger.

These pants, acrylic paint, reminded you of that oil paint you saw at the Wet Paint store in St. Paul you frequent too many times a month.

He explained his name to YYY as it always seems perplexing. I am Lib, short for Librium. I was brought here to keep the balance, to keep the city of oil paint from drying up and submitting to the overzealous Dominion. They are like an army or high-powered fans drying out the surface of the world. He carries this turpentine sledge and smash anything that freezes up. “We should wander over to the Soap Factory if you’re interested there is a film festival tonight.” And the two struck up conversations and talked to other abstract “shape-people” of all sizes and colors. They wandered into, D and D2 and D3. They ate a popsicle and rode bikes that blinked in sync like fireflies in the night sky. And when the dream ended they found themselves awake in a world that was changed and yet still stayed very much the same but the dream of it that world was beautiful.

THREE IMPROVISATIONS ON DREAMS UNKNOWN

1.

Of course dogs dream. What a silly question. Anyone who’s watched a dog kicking its legs and grunting while fast asleep knows that dogs dream. I think we’re missing the more important question here. Of what do they dream?

These same people who tell you that dogs, without a doubt, dream, may also assert that dogs only dream of chasing squirrels. This assumption is a disservice to the imagination of our furry companions.

Fido could be, for example, chasing a cat or a small child, or perhaps he decided that he’d like to join you at the gym and is on the treadmill. Or maybe he’s dreaming that he’s a majestic creature like the one he saw on television last weekend when you both crawled into bed for movie night. He could be galloping through golden wheat fields right now. So yes—dogs dream. But don’t assume to know of what.

2.

Memories are dreams. If you don’t pay them enough attention, they may slip into nothingness. You’ll be just as you were before. You can re-enter a memory if you’re in the right state of mind.

Memories have the crackling, fuzzy-

around-the-edges quality that dreams so often have. That blurred canvas could be a coffee table—or was it Maggie with her litter of kittens?

That blurry canvas can be anything you want it to be. That’s what it means to have a memory. The only record is the track worn between neurons and we all know the miracle of brain plasticity.

3.

You were dressed all punk all teased hair, dark eye makeup all “I’ll kick your ass in leather boots” but I knew you wouldn’t.

And we were all gigglesplosion jumping on a miniature trampoline and we didn’t twist our loose ankles or step on each other’s toes.

And it was all white lights and sheets Mother Mary presiding over—blessing over the cool water flowing, buzzed kids tumbling, snoring, humming, murmuring kids.

And he was all slender-finger-beckoning kissed me soft two times—soft soft.

And you were all “doesn’t count, it was just a dream for him.”

THE KING OF A CLOCKWORK CAKE UNkNOWN When I was a child I dreamt the brass crane on my grandmother’s fridge was the king of a clockwork cake. On each of the confection’s tiers a different type of animal danced in jerky spasms. The metallic treat hovered in a blue sky and was crowned by the crane in repose.

I tried to impose my will on the scene, and was told promptly by the regal bird that did not own the dream and had no right.

I awoke, but searched for the bird whenever I slept even to this day. I haven’t found him yet, but I met his owl twin, his rollerblading cousins, and even ate dinner with his immediate family (though they all denied the relation.)

“Dreams are featherweights, And memory can shake them off with ease.”

—Wislawa Szymborska, “The Real World”

UNTITLED STEPH SAUERHAFT

Yes, I have changed the outcome of dreams. Or at least I believe so. I usually have a sense of “knowing” when I am dreaming.

However, I often wonder if I really am changing the outcome or if for some reason that was just a way my dream was originally intended to go. What if that “sense of knowing” is actually just part of the dream itself?

Are dreams predetermined from the beginning? Even if we think we have an effect on them is there a chance the belief of the effect is the dream itself?

The question actually keeps me up at night. Who knows what I could be dreaming about in the meantime…

BRIDGET IRELAND Do your dreams affect your daily moods?

I think that my daily moods affect my dreams.

DIANE AUBERN “If you could interact with anyone in a dream, it would be…”

TAYLOR SWIFT. I want to know what she’d say about it if she knew me. No matter how shallow or trite, she always also seems to be spot on! Taylor’s my moral compass and I lead life as if I was wearing a WWTD bracelet (you don’t know Jesus any more than I know Taylor, OK?).

She could help me always choose the right path because she’s always so confident in the decisions she makes. This confidence makes me think that she knows better than me what to do in every situation. I know that if Taylor and I could meet, she would change my life. I already feel like she knows me. She has magical powers!

SLEEPLESS DREAMS BETH IRELAND Biking without stopping laughing without qualms endless night with old friends and new friends and siblings.

Tyler Caver How Important Are Dreams?

Dreams, for me, reveal the fears of my life through their coming to fruition in the moments before waking.

They also use the sights of my waking life to crudely cobble together into an absurdist reality. So it seems dreams would be useful for uncovering fears for those who can’t acknowledge them on their own.

But I feel also that if we were able to record dreams to play them back once we wake, with their supposed goldmine of information combined with the absurdist thrill, we would read too much into them. In our new obsession, dreams would lose their magic.

That they need to be focused on to hold onto them—it requires discipline. Like love. All things worth holding onto require something. Something more than nothing.

I get to that point where I’m so tired that I feel like I’m sleep walking.

Swimming through heavy air, my eyes blur the edges of the world.

But this night was a dream long before that.

People I hardly know but already love—great friends are never real but these ones are and I want what they have.

Tonight I dream that I’m one of them, biking through this endless night, laughing without ceasing.

I hope they love me, too, when the sun rises.

[IF WE DIG UP THE OVERWORLD] BRIAN LAIDLAW

LOST AND FOUND JEN KOHAN His first impulse was to remove her shoes.

Her left knee was scraped raw and her right ankle was folded underneath her rump at an odd angle.

The fingertips of her left hand rested lightly on her thigh as if she had casually reclined for an afternoon chat. But her eyes were closed. Her lipstick was smeared and her lips slightly parted, mostly because one flushed cheek pressed against the brick wall. Sweaty hair matted to her forehead, she had the appearance of a child exhausted by crying. Or sickness. He wanted to press a cool, wet cloth against her face the way his mother did when he was ill.

Her right hand lay palm up, next to her propped up body.

He thought it was odd that she was upright, that she must have almost slid down the wall from a standing position, in an attempt to maintain composure. The sitting up, kneeling pose was somehow more dignified than a prone or fetal position.

Definitely more dignified.

The skirt of her dress was pushed up high on her legs, but still covered her undergarments. One weary strap fell from her shoulder and here again, he wanted to…

It couldn’t hurt to hook his index finger underneath the cotton strip and help pull it back into place. He still wanted to remove her shoes.

Instead, he picked up the tiny handbag that had spilled open in front of her. The reason he found her to begin with was all because of a rolling bus token that emerged from this alley as he walked home. It was rolled so steadily, so confidently, that he turned his head to find its source. That’s when he saw her. The purse had fallen into a sphere of overhead light in the narrow darkness, but she remained mostly hidden by shadow, a good fifteen feet away.

It wasn’t until be came closer that he noticed her pretty face.

Inside the silk purse were two broken cigarettes, lipstick called “pink lemonade” in a shiny silver tube, a nail file, and three one-dollar bills. He picked up a cell phone

LIZ SCHULTZ

ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 26TH JOHN GORDON On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

Or it was maybe a dream. What professionals refer to as a “shitty dream.” As far as I know.

And I seemed to be hungover.

And there was something about Sonic.

The fast hedgehog. Maybe that was the dream.

And there was more there, waiting just out of—

*** On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

“Is that real?” I asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” they said.

***

As near as I could tell, I was … hungover?

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

There was something about an orca attack, just buzzing at the edges of my mind.

I’ve been hungover before. More than once. And it seemed to be happening again.

“Is that real?” I asked.

And there was something missing.

“Yes,” they said.

Something about my glasses.

***

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

I was sore, and my head pounded. A hangover, I figured.

“What happened to my glasses?” I asked.

“They were smashed,” they said.

“Ooh,” I sighed. “My birthday glasses.”

*** On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

All signs pointed to a hangover. I’ve had hangovers before, of course. But while I’ve woken up burned, wet, cold, and once, only once, in jail, I’d never woken up with my face feeling like this before. I touched it, and it seemed bigger than usual. And my left eye was a little … squinty, I guess.

I looked around through my squinty eye, and the room did seem dismayingly jaily again.

“Did I do something … illegal?” I asked. I wondered if this could be some sort of jail … hospital. For, you know, sick criminals.

“No,” they said.

That was a relief, at least. I should have known. People in jail seem a lot angrier.

But … “What happened to my glasses?”

I asked.

“I’m afraid that they were smashed,” they said.

“Ooh,” I sighed. “My birthday glasses.”

***

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

My face was puffed up, and my left eyebrow was … problematic. It wasn’t all in the right place. Which is unusual for a hangover, I thought. Although there

was another potential explanation: “Am I drunk?” I asked.

“No,” they said. “Maybe a beer, but that’s all.”

“Did I do something … illegal?” I asked.

“No,” they said. “It was just an accident.”

“What happened to my glasses?” I asked.

“They got smashed,” they said. “And they cut your head open a little.”

“Ooh,” I sighed. “My birthday glasses.”

***

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

This was clearly no ordinary hangover!

I thought. Something had been done to me! I gathered the available evidence.

A headache … Sonic, the fastest hedgehog … An orca attack …

I think … I think … I think I’ve been attacked by an orca. It made sense. The orca: the killer whale. But … aaah—I wasn’t dead. Someone had been attacked by an orca, but it probably wasn’t me, because I seemed to be alive.

But something was wrong.

“Am I drunk?” I asked, and I tried to sit up.

“Nope,” they said. “They tested your blood.”

“And … did I do something … illegal?”

I asked.

“No,” they said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What about Sonic? How does he fit in?”

“I’m really not sure,” they said. “Maybe that’s something you did last night.”

“A hedgehog?” I scoffed. “I don’t think so. … But what happened to my glasses?” I asked.

“Your glasses … hmmm. Well, they got smashed,” they said.

“Ooh,” I sighed. “My birthday glasses.”

***

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

I had some small concern that I was hungover.

“Was I drunk?” I asked.

They didn’t say anything.

“And did I do anything … illegal?”

Nothing.

“I wonder … what happened to my glasses?”

Still nothing.

I seemed to be alone. Almost. A man I knew was walking down the hallway and I could see him through the door.

He was dressed like a security guard.

Name: Matt.

I jumped out of the bed. “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, Matt! What are you doing here?!”

Matt stopped, put his hand on his pepper spray, and turned around. “John?”

He took his hand away from the spray, but not all the way away. “I work here.

What are you doing here?”

“I work here?” I guessed.

“No,” he said.

I thought about it. “Then I’m not sure.

Something about an orca. (The killer whale.) And something about Sonic.”

“The fast hedgehog,” I added.

Matt said nothing. Then, “yes.”

“You heard about the orca attack?” I asked.

Matt said nothing for a while again.

And then he asked, “What’s with your pants?”

I looked at myself. My shirt count was currently at zero, but my pants count seemed to be up to two or three. I could see all the layers of pants where they rolled up over my right calf. “Staying warm?” I guessed.

“Why is the leg rolled up?” he asked.

“Staying cool?” I guessed.

***

On the morning of February 26th, two

thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

She was asking me something. “And, on a scale from one to ten, where would you say the pain is?”

Jesus, I thought. Has she never had a hangover? She probably doesn’t get out much.

Plus, if I’m the one with the headache, how come I have to answer all the questions? But I am nothing if not game.

“One to ten? This one,” I said, “goes up to eleven.”

“Oh!” she said, and started writing on her clipboard.

“Wait,” I said. “Just joking.”

“Ha ha,” she said. “Ha.” “It’s maybe a seven,” I whispered.

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

“Do you know what day it is?” asked a woman with a clipboard. “What’s the date?”

I looked at the page-a-day calendar on the wall behind her. Nice game, ma’am, I thought, but I guess I’m holding all the cards. “It’s the twenty-sixth. Of …

February!”

“Good!” she said. “Do you know the year?”

Oh. She had me. Even with the help of my squinty eye, the year was printed

too small for even the most powerful of squints to make out. “I’m not so sure,” I said.

“That’s ok,” she said. “It’s twenty-ten.”

“Oooh,” I said, trying not to let her know that she had won. “Uhn-kay.

Probably should have known that.”

“It’s ok,” she said again. “This can be very confusing, and you’re doing very well.”

“Sure,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Do you need to use the toilet again?” she asked.

I considered it. “Yes.” “Number one or number two? Do you want help?”

“Number … pee,” I said. “Thank you, but I’m ok.”

I got up, and moved into the bathroom.

All by myself.

“Just shout if you start to feel too dizzy,” she said from the other room.

“Sure,” I called back. Too dizzy. Pff. I was peeing like a professional. “I’m a little concerned about this orca thing, though,” I said, just to show her who was too dizzy to pee and talk. “And I’m not sure how Sonic fits in. The hedgehog, you know. But I’m …”

Wait. Did I need to use the toilet ‘again’?

The clues made it sound like I had used the toilet before. And did I want help?

Had I been helped before? How could I not remember that? Did that mean that

I got up, and moved into the bathroom.

All by myself. someone had, like, held my … junk?

That seemed very strange.

“Everything ok?”

“Good!” I called back. “Very good! Everything is fine!”

But everything was not fine. You can’t go around having people touch your … stuff, and not even remember it.

Sonic, the fast hedgehog. Orca attack.

Potential junk contact.

Sonic, the fast hedgehog. Orca attack.

Potential junk contact.

Sonic, the fast hedgehog. Orca attack.

Potential junk contact.

Sonic, the fast hedgehog …

***

On the morning of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

“Ooh, shit, Sonic the Hedgehog!”

“What?” said my mom.

“Did we play Sonic the Hedgehog last night?”

“I think you probably did,” she said.

“You’ve mentioned it before.”

“And the orca attack? Was that me too?”

“On Summit Avenue?” she said. “No, that was on CNN.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “It is the killer whale, after all. But how did I get here?”

“Johnny, you crashed your bicycle.”

“Oooh,” I said. “Uhn-kay. So this is the hospital?”

“Yes.” “Was I drunk?” I asked.

“No, it doesn’t look like it.”

“How did it happen?”

“We don’t know. Some guy just found you lying on the street last night,” she said.

“Just lying on the street?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sad!” I said. “If that was somebody else, that would be really sad!” I thought for a little while. “And what happened to the glasses you gave me for my birthday.”

“Interesting you should ask,” she said.

“The were smashed.”

“Ooh,” I sighed. “My birthday glasses.”

And on the afternoon of February 26th, two thousand and ten, I woke up in the hospital.

GOOD NIGHT

CONTRIBUTORS

Amber, Andrew, and Chelsea Diane Aubern David Bekkerus Craig Benson Erica Berglund Chelsea Bertsch Eric Best Alyssa Bluhm Harris Burkhalter L.C. Burkhalter Tyler Caver Matthew Couri Jacobs Michael Crossan Amber Davis Owen Dennis Carolyn Dussault Heid E. Erdrich Paul Foster Jessica Franck Jay Gabler Jocelyn Hale Mary Harrold Michelle Hegarty Robyn Hendrix

Hannah K. Holman Greg Hunter Beth Ireland Blake Iverson C.I.M. Jones Susan Koefod Jen Kohan Marissa Landrigan Becky Lang Steven Lang Alex Lauer Anika Ledlow Marlee Leebrick-Stryker Elyse Lyon Alex Macgillis Gretchen Marquette Amanda C. Martin Kylo Moonguts Jay McMahon David Mendez R.V. Monizo Jr. Michael Kiesow Moore Patrick Nathan Luke Nolby

L. Notermann Sheila Path McMahon Eric Path Kasey Payette Casey Peterson Matthew Philippi Gina Quiram Riley Matthew Sandvik Steph Sauerhaft Chad Smith SPD Carl Atiya Swanson Joel Turnipseed Laura Turpin Lauren Van Schepen Carl Atiya Swanson Maggie Whitman Dominigue Winders Yael

...and many, many more