nightmare (for One Shoot Sunday)
the last drop of turpentine
stains the moon on the landscape
she conjured
out of yarn that wobbled
like disembodied Adam’s apple
talking to her of a man
she pulled a meadow
where cows wear earrings
and metal buckled boots
they stomp on blue irises
eat white poppies and sneezing
blow balloons from their noses
she draws a woman in a shed
whittling an arrow for a son, but
where’s the boy
a blond head and arms like sticks
legs broken in angles appears
astride on a cow
the moon comes rising
mid spring among the grumbling oaks
their skin brittle as glass crack
the wind is cruel in the meadow
it sweeps in gales and shifts corners
unexpected
she runs out of turpentine
as the white mice appear in between
the boy and a grinning calf
the spaces she overlooked
now scurrying as swift as the wind
she wallops a blob of blue
as if the sky does not cause
clouds that mutate into white mice
the last of the turpentine drips
to the woman’s lap
where is the man and son ask
the elder berries
the woman leaps to dance
the dance of the moon when crazed
by the giggling stars
not stars but tickling
white mice has the woman stoned
after the dance to shake
her nightmare off
she doesn’t waken even as the man wills
to turn himself into a bearded mouse
the painting clears out
in the dream the woman in the shed
becomes a petulant woman wearing
white breasts and the man-mouse
has multiplied on her
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry from a prompt by Rosie Hardy. This inimitable site for poets and artists starts the first Sunday of its second year, winning a Shorty Award for the Arts in its first year. Check out what made it win!
I wish to thank Adam, Chris G, Brian, Pete and Claudia again for having done a wonderful job. NO word is ever enough for what I feel I’ve gained from OSP.