Remix with a Few Lines from Keats

My throat is dry [   ] a drowsy numbness pains [   ] my sense as though [   ] obscured by smoke [   ] I drive on roads dividing patchwork farmland, fences [   ] wide-eyed llamas [   ] perpetual surprise [   ] after a dream, I sip water in the dark [   ] I don’t want to sleep [   ] my husband breathing deeply [   ] my children twisting in their beds [   ] smoke rising from the fields [   ] end of harvest razing [   ] I lift the rock, find a family of woodlice [   ] curled away from me [   ] sleeping or pretending to sleep [   ] hemlock lacing the road’s shoulders [   ] my too-dry eyes [   ] the tender babies are paler [   ] than their parents, little ghosts [   ] rolled in on themselves, my children are sleeping [   ] when I lift the blanket [   ] when, after a dream, I smoke in the dark [   ] no bird singing [   ] nothing to ode [   ] the sharp scent of pine, wet soil, beast musk, rain [   ] the dull opiate of things [   ] what will outlive us [   ] I turn on the screen [   ] a panel of men in a void, screaming [   ] cornflowers curling into rust [   ] I breathe in smoke [   ] fists curled shut [   ] the green of marijuana fields [   ] the pungent scent of [   ] bodies curled in sleep [   ] as if sleep were a cure [   ] one minute past, and Lethe-wards [   ] hear that crackling? [   ] pine cones dropping like heavy flames [   ] glaciers splitting [   ] howling ghosts [   ] what earth will be left for [   ] my children cry out in their sleep [   ] dark room filling with the smoke I exhale [   ] hills roiling [   ] the screaming stays while the screen goes dark [   ] I can’t see it disappearing [   ] to thy high requiem [   ] my throat is dry [   ] do I wake or sleep? [   ] I don’t want to wake

Copyright © 2020 by Danielle Cadena Deulen. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 4, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.