Although this may sound like a gin-soaked line,
last night, I dreamt about you and your coal
overcoat in the festooned Neon of Manhattan.
Wind swirled flakes of autumnal snow up
from gutters. Kanji, flashing amber, verdigris,
and cherry framed your face. So what if you
were, moments later, someone else? We walked
that city block, our footsteps falling in
common time across gum-crusted concrete
I’ve never seen,
and then the dogs, wanting
out, leapt into our bed. I hurried them
into the yard while trying hard not to wake
my wife, and stood on the stoop, lacing narrative
to the logic of dream: your sudden absence, coat
tattered, a path in the City, unchanged.
From the porch, the fresh-cut grass, heavy with dew
in streetlamp glare: millions of tenements
cascading light across a tiny island.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 4.
Les Kay holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati’s Creative Writing program. His first chapbook, The Bureau, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2015. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals including The McNeese Review, Redactions, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Whiskey Island, and Sugar House Review.
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