the stubborn but inspired unconscious

I’ve been visiting a hypnotherapist—because I’m not the kind of girl who can be content with just two therapists (couples and regular), and because I want her to convince my subconscious that a long happy life is viable, that imminent doom is not my destiny. She’s been having me write down my dreams, and let me tell you, that shit is one long found poem.

Last night I attended Rhapsodomancy’s ninth anniversary reading at Good Luck Bar and heard work by Cynthia Cruz, Rob Roberge, Louise Mathias and Wendy Ortiz. Soon I was itching to write dark, spare poetry like Cruz’s. Here’s what I came up with, transcribed directly from the previous night’s dream. I genuinely don’t know what it means, which feels like cheating, like I’m one of those coy writers. But, like about eighty percent of my dreams, it seems about guilt on some level, and appropriate for Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day/Genocide Day.

A Movie We Didn’t Know We Were In

We played in the abandoned rooms

beneath the abandoned house.

Or maybe it was a school or stable;

the walls were damp stone.

They were schoolboys, young

but not innocent.

It was a prank, or a movie

we didn’t know we were in.

The water rushed in,

nothing so rational

as a cleansing flood.

She was a girl and a horse.

We forgot she was locked there,

and fled.

Did we see her tilt her face

toward the top of the grate

as the water lifted her?

Did we hear her scream,

or did we just know

how it would have gone,

and imagine it?