Arvio - Night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis

This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf Copyright 2013 by Sarah Arvio All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. H. H.

Auden by W. H. Auden, copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, Inc., on behalf of North American print rights and Curtis Brown, Ltd., on behalf of UK print and world electronic rights.

Special thanks to Victoria G. Pearson Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arvio, Sarah, 1954
Night thoughts : 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis / by Sarah Arvio.1st ed.
p. cm.
This Is a Borzoi book.
eISBN: 978-0-307-95956-0
1. DreamsPoetry. 2. Women Poets, American20th centuryBiography.
3.

Dream interpretation. 4. Psychoanalysis. 5. Memory. 6.

Womens dreams.
7. Language and languages in dreams. 8. Psychic trauma in adolescence. 9. I. I.

Title.
PS 3601. R 78 S 66 2006
811.6dc23 2012020095 Jacket image by Malin Gabriella Nordin
Jacket design by Elena Giavaldi v3.1 for Rigel

Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love. W. H. Auden
night thoughts is an exploration of the dreaming mind. It is also an intimate memoir, describing the evolution of a psychoanalysis and the events that gave rise to that treatment.

It gives the reader a set of dream poems, then notes and an index of images. Although the dream poems are best read sequentially, they may also be read by dipping in and out. The notes, however, should be read as a narrative, from start to finish. The index offers a way to relocate or cross-reference some of the images, colors and other dream-related thoughts that occur and recur in the poems and notes. S.A.

there are still the bad dreams I have to say a dram in the thought of a bad bad night a bad potion potent with impotence & pain that dream in which you say I am ruined with you I am no more & the taxi leaves me standing in the street & the streetlamp goes out there is this sort of dream that leaves me without a heart or more like with a hole in my selfheart heartself that hellhole of a dream oh hole oh hell the inside of my mind damning me with bad portents & potions you said to come I came & you killed me this kind of killing that kills me again I have a snakeplant spiking from my skull with a slim yellow stripe on every spike I have dirt falling through my yellow hair & jade rings on my toes on all my toes in all the shades of jade of snaky jade that smack as I walk on the wooden floor I am self-repulsed & reptilian jaded shady I am not me I am a jade I say a spike a spiky jade I am yellow but not curious all fear all sallow callow damp in wet green jade I dont think I like myself this smacks of snake this smacks of musty mossy damp oh say I say this smacks of me of me theres an altar on the altiplano all white stone under an altering sky & pink water is running down through a sink this is the white sink of the sacrifice bloodwater the water is mixed with blood & Im washing water down the sink theres a finger left from the sacrifice one baby finger lying on the stone it isnt my finger it is someones whose name is young beautiful or else young war & she doesnt have a hand or a head or a body shes nothing anymore alone on the stone alone on the stone shes lying altered on the altarstone I stand at the mirror at the mirror Im standing staring at myself not my self but my slight slim girlbody standing at an angle & here I am with the old brownpaper wall behind me when the snakes begin to swarm in the brown roses behind me then push out lifting their heads & snaking out & then I turn & run with my hair flowing behind me up the pair of stairs & down the long hall down the long front stairs & over the porch along the brick walk & across the lawn as they snake behind snaking as snakes do but flying also brown like brownpaper Im out walking in a white shirt white skirt white hat under some trees when I come out into the sun & away from the trees all my white clothes are splashed with blood I feel no sense of drama or surprise no shock there is only this thought my white clothes are splashed with brightpink blood as though splashed with the shadows of the trees I dont say pink in the dream I dont say shadow or white hat only later thinking back I notice that the blood is prettypink gaudy & there is noplace it comes from it is mine or not mine but from noplace I know of out walking in a white hat & now an airplane lands in the field & incinerates I use this strange word when I tell the dream not flames or burns there was a rusty barrel out in back we called the incinerator strange word for an old barrel where we burned the trash I took my diaries out there in back in the brightdamp where a spatter of rain fell in the ashes & striking matches lit the edges & watched as the pages curled charred & would not burn I said my life burn up my life & for one lifetime I thought I can stop now & take them back but no they were burning so I let them burn & now I will marry & I open the silverdrawer but the silver spoons are snapped at the neck they lie there snapped in the bed of the drawer like the silver heirloom rings our grandmother gave us made of her old spoons inscribed with the names of old aunts & I wonder what happened to the bowls of the spoons maybe they spooned together like lovers do lying in drawers but without their hafts or they rolled over in sleep spoonfeeding love maybe they were spoonfed all the love a lovespooner needs & the looming of my nevermarriage her silver hair my yellow hair our hearts heres a dream about my mother there are three black smokestacks in a black night sky belching black smoke & yellow sparks & as the sparks land beyond the black river they are yellow forsythia blossoms cynthia was my mother so ha ha we said for cynthia for cynthia to the great bush of flaming yellow sparks only now years later I say for sin then incinerator for the barrel where I burned up my sins I had tried to insinuate myself into her thoughts but no luck they were elsewhere but why three black smokestacks & why the black river I want to make love with you on the porch the shady porch with windows all around & the maple trees all leafy all around everyone is coming onto the porch they wont let us have our love embrace theres a girl named robin carrying an egg a toy egg called a robins egg & she smiles demurely as she gives me the egg its skyblue as sky as spotted as a robins egg & just as breakable as I knew I had seen a tiny half egg cracked with a tiny creature coiled up inside it had fallen from the maple tree & cracked & the realbaby robin chick had died theres an old red buick on a mountain & a red phone in life the redphone was in the hall & the realgirl robin phoned & said we heard you did something that begins with F & ends with UCK & its not FIRETRUCK I spelled it out & thought is that what I did or did not or else maybe almost FIRETRUCK UCKFUCK & I heard her laugh & another girl laughed years later I saw her & she said we were all doin it you were too young my softsillyself taking the redphone hearing the firetruck & burning red alone redface on the mountain alone