How can one express neatly the prosody of a dream? The scansion of things. To each a rhythm unrequited. The stressed and the unstressed. The living and the dead dangling off a precipice, like a pronoun: He. In my dream, my father’s tormentors become blurred as their couplets fly off into the realm of honeyed language. They address Him. Sleep.
***
Cégeste a young poet says
flat is the prosody of some
one you wish you could for
get when grief has no shape
no hidden symmetry to confide in
The Somnambulist nods off
in the zone or in resentment
***
Writing poems in times like these feels like a last resort
as when sick
if you’re sick gargle salt
Me? I gargle language
grief’s backwash
grit semen salt sediment
in this way it is very rude to write a poem
to spit it out swish it around gurgle swallow
savor it
Poem, out!
Lara Mimosa Montes is a writer based in New York and Minneapolis. Her writing has appeared in Fence, Triple Canopy, BOMB, and elsewhere. Currently, Lara is a Ph.D. candidate in English at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She also teaches poetry at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her first book, The Somnambulist, is forthcoming from Horse Less Press. She was born in the Bronx.