Lepson - Dreaming in Color

DREAMING IN COLOR 2016 by Ruth Lepson All rights reserved Alice James Books are published by Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc., an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington. Alice James Books 114 Prescott Street Farmington, ME 04938 www.alicejamesbooks.org eISBN: 978-1-938584-83-1 Cover by Lucy Clark Original design by Carl Kay and Andrea Golden Photo by Elsa Dorfman Original typesetting by Jeffrey Schwartz Original paste-up by Ronna Johnson N OTE TO THE R EADER Alice James Books encourages you to calibrate your e-reader device settings using the line of characters below as a guide, which optimizes the line length and character size: and they have no one, not even each other, being separately placed Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. Doing this will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accomodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems may be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the line break will be marked with a shallow indent. For Bobby, For my parents and grandparents, For my friends, and especially Claudia Table of Contents Living with People LIVING WITH PEOPLE Talking is something.

And tables, talking at tables. Eating and paintings and what walls. What are they asking. What am I looking at. A person talking and eating. Im looking at the eyes that dont look at me.

The foot tapping, the hungry person, what is being eaten. JULY MORNING Stuck under the pillow, my hand sleeps. Uncovered, it blushes, pink next to the dark blue sheet. Held up, its a white hand filled with lines. Edges of the mirror become prisms that catch and multiply last nights purple dress. Sunlight moves into the room like a feeling Is it yellow or is it white? All the room tilts like a wheel of color.

The next time I wake up I will be married. FEBRUARY NIGHT The snowflakes hurl themselves down in chunks to the middle of the street. Things tilt. Im a little afraid of an avalanche from the sky. Chills immobilize my body. At a quarter to seven, on goes the light of the church steeple.

Tonight youre talking business, church music from another country. When the snowflakes are this big they spread out space. On the day your mother dies, if its snowing, and the cars are stuck, lets walk down the middle of the street together. After a few blocks we can wrap our arms around each others shoulders and go walking away, like two old men in a childrens book, stepping cautiously down the frozen river. SUCCESS I. When youre dark you come to me.

In your dark two slivers are work and family. Theyre deep but they narrow. When you say you are so busy, it frightens me, in an opaque day, clouded with memory. II. An old dog dreams on the rug, his stiff legs now move like a swans, underwater, loose, and free. Your legs twitch under the blanket.

All the day they move stiffly to push ahead. I run, but only to catch up. They run, to be loved. They have a memory. ANOTHER SUNSET for M.L. No men, no bridges can be found under this salt water rushing over my knees. You read on the beach about medicine and art; you sweat all over the magazine; you cover your eyes with it: there is pressure over the bridge of your nose.

Meanwhile, I am drowning. You have no notion, and, after I drown, I walk back and dont say too much about it. Are you my ankles. I am your bread: I have soaked in too much salt. You have nothing to ask me for, and we drive home, colored by another sunset. MELODRAMA for R.S. Those times turning myself into a tornado.

The man I saw like a luminescent figure in a flat landscape. Or the man with hard edges, stepping out of the misty crowd. Id watch him and dream of being. But now the soft focus is dissolved; the landscape is so clear I step into it, and those tears dry up. I tuck him under my arm like a newspaper. The line from my heart to his body shrank and I saw the map around it I saw the line become a road to somewhere.

I lose myself in the towns. Still, sometimes, without a map, I try the road alone, and his image floats by, dense as a storm that gathers along the horizon, light as the flicker of the edge of a dream. AMBIVALENCE The rooms can breathe now that youve left. The ocean, big O, fills the hall and my fuzzy head. Tired of adjectives and nouns, now I have a chance for verbs. Now I have a chance to take walks.

The first layer of beige on your canvas seeped through the rooms. Now Ill remember myself, again. Your angular self, tilting around the hall, like a piece of paper what is it doing in big rooms on a new street? Do you see how hard you are to talk to? Youre like a chip of granite that, when I saw it, made me feel warm. I wont know what youre eating for dinner. You wont know if Im still hanging around. Ill be listening to sounds more carefully.

This is like taking off a tight dress that I love. SKYWRITING Im a thousand feet tall. I use white chalk. Each letter takes so long. Im sending you a message that reads, Listen to me! Its painful to write this large. Youre walking down Main Street.

Several people notice you. They say, Look up, but youre annoyed. Youre looking for the hardware store. Youre having a hard enough time finding it; you cant be distracted like that. Well, now Im stooped over. Im sorry I ever did it.

Everyone saw my skywriting; I forgot to put it in code. After a while it smudged and drifted away. I have shrunk back to normal size. An inch shorter, to tell the truth. Im walking down Main Street again hoping I dont bump into you. Sit down. Sit down.

Now the crowd begins to gobble, Chew Wrigleys. Soon they slap each others faces. Yanking each other by their collars off the bleachers, They run to Elizabeth. She decrescendoes. She pivots, leaving them breathless. I know, she smiles savagely in bed To her leaning husband who likes casseroles, But not tonight.

CARMELLA this isnt another letter, Carmella I know I havent kept in touch you were rock-ribbed pitiful a pile of purple bones rattle who sinewy, acute, in unknowable pain cheekbones a foot long Im going to the movies tonight youre rattling in the main room of the ward, after twenty odd years. Alyosha, what do you mean by happiness? who? your sister every Christmas dragged you to her grave you killed our mother, you whore you dont speak for years at a time, who? Laura came to see you months after I heard you heard from Ruth Who i uth? and you rattle on thats a good sign, she recognized your name, who playing cards for months then silent except for occasional curses cant do that ta me who cant, Carmella? they gave you black eyes when you wouldnt shower when you would shower they laughed at your body who it does no good to remember you I didnt understand years later someone said you were wrong to expect her to care about you who on the way home from the hospital three of us in the back seat of the station wagon doing hear no evil see no evil speak no evil Alyosha, what do you mean by happiness? she knicked her wrist with Chiclet, chewed it, blood and all, saying thats what my breath smells like in the morning anyway GIRL Girl who slides below shadows, who escapes into rooms at night, and every morning has time to herself. The girl with quiet clothes. A line is broken in her mind. She bends to collect wood in the manmade forest. She is listening intently for someone to talk to.