Fort Night
The snake is
a sleeve the deer
puts on, its mouth
a beaded cuff
in the haze men
make of morning
with each release
of their fist-gripped
guns. Is this a dream
of shame? Is this
a dream of potential
unmet, of possibility
undone? School,
no pants. Brush,
no teeth. Podium,
no poems. Open
door, all wall.
Dear Monster,
none of the guests
we disinvited arrive.
In the darkness
no lion comes.
Copyright © 2019 by Lisa Olstein. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The image that set this poem in motion came from a video I happened upon online when I should have been sleeping: a large snake slowly swallowing a doe, some hunters standing around watching, all of it impossible-seeming and saturated in a dream-like way. I’m intrigued by dream logic in a very concrete sense: by the recurring dreams that inhabit us particularly but that many of us share, by the taxonomies and associative architectures dreams reveal, and by instances when waking life is uncannily dream-like not in the sense of a watered down adjective for soft-focus or aspirational, but as enacted and unnerving portraits, portals, inventions. I wanted this poem to both explore and manifest some of those questions and qualities.”
—Lisa Olstein
Lisa Olstein
