it began as a dream about a group of strong, sleek men in a field. In a circle. They were passing heavy reams of canvas -- unspooled from angular bolts -- between one another. Looking out at them in the field -- the way their skin gleamed -- I felt envious. "be careful what you wish for," said the dream.

In the next scene we are walking along a narrow stone path that borders the sea. The sea is black and held back with the help of a wall. We look down into the black sea, and like a cloche the ink night descends, staining our sheets. But we are sequined and lithe. We gleam along.

Now the numerous gold lights of night light up one by one -- pop! pop! pop! in the trees and along the wires. We make our way from the stony sea path to a stony, open air banquet hall of pink marble columns and luminous chandeliers of wax and iron. On the long table, enormous silver platters are heaped with heavy piles of meat -- mostly bird. Pheasant and quail and partridge. Though the meat is cooked, feather quills cling to the skin. Black feathers with green and white and iridescent spots. Folks grab a wing, feather meat, and proceed to have warbling, slow conversations about the political conditions of the government, about freedom.

And then those who have eaten the meat begin to experience a change. They shed all their rings. They retire to the stone benches where they rest and sweat profusely, fanning themselves before they acquiesce to the overwhelming desire to remove their drenched clothing.

Soon, in all of the prettily landscaped lounge areas, they are only wet bodies and piles of steaming, sopping clothes.

Somehow, with the sun-rise, this scene melts away, evaporates into the field of men passing the reams of cloth. Their sweat and nakedness a type of interminable clock. A sort of labor that never resolves.

At this point I want to awake, but cannot.

I had a dream that a college friend and a grad school friend were both pregnant. We were all living in my childhood home in south carolina. I dream about this house every few months. In this instance, the home was in a somewhat remote location and in a state of semi-abandonment. Room flowed into room, and there were random people there -- acquaintances from college -- and there was a type of war; an impending army that would gather and descend on us. But first there was a baby. My college friend had given birth. I was surprised because she never looked pregnant, but she asked me to come see her baby. We went into the yard, and entered -- on our hands and knees -- a tight-knit grove of pine tree. We sat cross-legged on the dirt, and then a large raccoon and a smaller raccoon came into the grove. It turned out that her baby was the little raccoon, who could actually stand up and speak and was overall very impressive and polite. "You're so advanced for a baby!" I exclaimed. My friend interjected that this was true of all raccoon babies -- they develop quickly, and their raccoon form keeps them safe from soldiers. I wondered whether it was the raccoon or my friend who had given birth, and how did it work? This thought was interrupted by the approaching army. We emerged from the grove and the whole yard was filled with people exiting my old house and heading into the hills. The trick was to go underground there -- to hide and disguise ourselves. When the army arrived, they crawled all over everything -- they were like insects, beetles. But they did not see us, did not notice us. Years later, a scout from the army returned. By then we had constructed a whole village from abandoned car bodies and scrap metal and house parts. No, we told the scout, we had no idea what happened to the people who had lived in my old house. We'd been here, outside of the conflict, living quietly with our dogs and foraging the hills for food. We did not know anything about anyone else. At this point most of us had gathered underground. When we heard the scout's footsteps above us fade away, we came up for air and light.

I dream that I've written essays

One of the dreams was about a paper I'd written called "The Fog of Scholarship." The thesis was that scholarship creates a fog around the subject, and sometimes it fills a book or a room. Or else it is there like a ghost in conversations. In the paper I called appearances of the fog in conversations "ghostings," and talked about how the language of scholarship is both guest and host which made the term especially appropriate. This all made perfect sense in the dream, even though now it seems...foggy.

Another essay was called "Multi-colored Pencils" and it was about how constructions and representations of race are articulated in different poetry communities. I remember that it seemed urgently important that I clarify that I wasn't talking about pencils of different colors, but rather pencils that were marbled rainbow (like these or these).

Another essay was called "Compassionate Sentences for Socialists" and it was written in a sort of Mad Libs form with many blanks above fine print descriptions of what should go in the blanks. There were things like "an animal with gentle skin" and "verb to describe the sound of machines" and "a house made out of paper and grass."

I have less time to write on paper or screens. I write when I am driving, or when I am walking home from class, or when I'm falling asleep. I see the words in my mind -- shuffling and reshuffling like scrabble tiles -- but my contact with the materials of writing -- paper, pencils, keys, and screens -- seems to be for typing and to-do lists.

These swans live at the lagoon at UCSB. For the longest time there was only one. Local birders believed that it was the offspring of a pair that had migrated out of the area. When a second swan appeared, the birding listserve was atwitter with the news. So many people were glad that the first swan was no longer alone.

I had a dream last night that had many of the features of a classic anxiety dream. I was due to get on a plane to London in a few days time, and in order to enter the plane I needed a confirmation number. I was confident that the confirmation number was in an envelope which was in a box, but everything was a mess and I kept putting off the moment when I would actually open the letter to try and find out if the confirmation number was there. Also, the person with whom I had planned to travel had (seemingly abruptly) decided that she wished to stay home among her new friends. I could see that these friends were much more exciting than I was. They danced and partied and seemed willing to consume substances I refused. I thought to share my hurt and disappointment with my mother, but I then decided it was unfair to worry her. Outside there was a party, and my attention was divided. I had conflicting impulses: to join in, to sulk, to ask my friend for an explanation.

I intended to go to a wedding in a elaborate castle that was, oddly, in the middle of a large cemetery. At least the cemetery was the type without headstones, but it seemed rather a bad omen to get married amidst the dead, yet I also realized that perhaps that feature made the location more desirable to some. I thought briefly of poltergeist and the muddy caskets that bobbed up like buoys in the huge mud hole intended for a suburban, backyard pool. It occurred to me that it would be best to ride my bike, which was a little like a wooden motorcycle. I was to go downtown after the ceremony, and my bike was swift and light, but I also worried that it could blow up like a bundle of sticks.

When I woke up, I missed my friend terribly.

the dreams have been sugary shifty and many times I am angry, yelling and yelling and yelling.

often the dreams involve difficulties in communication. this is a common dream theme. like trying to decipher what someone is saying under water, only instead of shouting or straining to hear, I am measuring my words...reigning in my desire to speak, treading lightly, scanning the faces in the room considering what I *might* say, clenching my fists, my jaw. In the dream last night I was in a house near my childhood home. It felt as though it was located in an old strip mall that had been converted into a tiny beach village-- narrow streets and wooden clapboard fences and dirt alleys. The house was crowded with a variety of people, living and dead, familiar and strange, old and young. There are many details that remain familiar -- the need to do laundry, the lack of curtains in the showers, the absence of hallways (simply room flowing into room), the general sense of almost poverty and dirt. But the detail that remains most vivid involves my hair. In the dream my hair, as it is in life, was long and thick. One of my friends or roommates -- it seemed we all lived together in all the houses, sometimes switching houses and rooms-- was a hairdresser. In the house I was in, there were many young girls between the ages of 5 and 12. They seemed to be without parents, and I had a sense of wanting to take care of them. Although they all had long dark hair (like mine), they needed more hair. I'm not sure why. Visibly, I couldn't see why they needed hair, but I felt and knew that they did. The hairdresser friend suggested that I donate some of my hair. I agreed. But somehow, before we could discuss how much or from what part of my head the hair would come, he had reached over and sheared the left side of my head. I wasn't completely bald, but my head was very lopsided. I wanted to complain; the hair on the right side of my head is much thicker than it is on the left and had we discussed it, I would have asked him to take hair from the right side. I was angry at his presumption and arrogance. But I didn't want to complain because one of the little girls had already sewn my hair into hers. I didn't want her to feel my surprise or anger at the man with the scissors because I didn't want her to worry that I didn't want her to have my hair. Instead of registering my disappointment with my friend, I said very loudly "I'm so glad that she has my hair." I said it very loudly several times. Everyone looked over at me and smiled. Later, when everyone was busy again, I went into the dusty alley and cried. It wasn't even a feeling of loss or sadness about the hair, but rather a feeling of terrible loneliness from which it seemed there would never be any escape.

One of the recurring themes in the dreams is that I am the person who "exposes" or hurts someone else. In one, I said something very loud about a wife and her boyfriend. I said this as I was walking down a hall. I didn't realize her husband was inside the kitchen off the hall until it was too late. I was mad at her, but I didn't want to expose her or hurt her husband's feelings. I also have no idea why I was even involved.

In another dream, I was in my parents' front yard at the old house in South Carolina. All these children -- mostly middle school students, boys and girls in plain clothing -- were in the yard playing. Somehow, a game started that required all of us to stand on one another's shoulders -- not in pairs but one person on top of another up and up and up. There most have been twenty of us standing on top of one another. I was the second person from the top. It was very high, and I was very afraid of falling. I wanted to get down, but I had some anxiety about asking -- the feeling was like an amplified version of needing to ask the people next to you in a theater to get up so you can exit the aisle and go to the bathroom. But finally I asked to get down. I scaled down the ladder of kids and back to the grass. I went inside the house and up to my old bedroom. I looked out the window and I saw the boy at the top of the tower of children fall. He fell face down, down, down. Everybody fell. But only the boy who'd been at the top died. It was a terrible accident, everyone said. Nobody connected my exit to his demise, but in my heart, I felt responsible. If I had bore out my discomfort, perhaps the boy would still be alive. But if I hadn't gotten down, perhaps I'd be dead too. The feeling was so terrible and complicated that I woke up.

the poem dress and the letter tree

In the dream last night there were many clothes and many dirty clothes. At one point, sequestered in what was my own little attic room in a massive house belonging to my parents, I had to write a poem a day, but I did not have paper and so I had to write these poems on a dress. The dress was a thick blue cotton (almost linen) and I was writing with a blue ball point pen, and so I had to press hard to make the ink flow onto the fabric. I was in a hurry and when the words were not very dark, I thought, "oh, I will be able to read them later, but they will not be what I think they are in this moment," and then I lamented that I am often lazy and rushed if an idea comes to me when I am in the midst of some other activity (or falling asleep) and I imagine (lazily) that I will remember what I was thinking and nothing will be lost. But it always is.

The other part of the dream was that it was before my sister's wedding. Although my sister's wedding was over a month ago, I dream about it often. In the dreams I do not know what to wear or my dress is dirty or there is a second wedding and I can't wear the same dress twice. There is often a closet filled with clothes that no longer fit or are not really appropriate for the occasion. Last night, I was busy unloading a car before the before-the-wedding party. E was there (her wedding is soon) and A and B and C (though they were late). For some reason, even though it wasn't *my* wedding, my mother had asked all my friends to write letters to me. She told them that letters meant more to me than anything else, and so the best thing they could give me would be a letter. My mother had filed all the letters in clear plastic sleeves (page protectors) and strung them in a tree. So the tree by the garage was full of these lovely letters sheathed in plastic and fluttering from their strings.

In the dream last night I was in an airport with J. We were catching an international flight, and as we wove through the concrete and open air check-in area of the airport, I had trouble pulling my suitcase and juggling my bags. When we got to the gate, I realized I didn't have my passport and J said not to worry about it and that she would get me in. The way in was red carpeted and sort of curved like walking into a large silver snail shell. Just as I was about to enter the silver tunnel, my bag spilled and all of these objects -- tiny things that I'd collected over the years -- scattered onto the floor. I tried to gather them up, but I knew the gates were closing. I kept wondering if I should continue to collect everything or leave some of it behind so I could get on the plane. I didn't have time to sort the objects or to make decisions about what I would keep and what I might throw away, so I kept picking things up and trying to get it all in the bag. J came out of the plane, which was like a large living room with curved couches and red carpet, and said c'mon we are leaving. And so I stood up and to enter and then the silver door closed and through a window I could see J in front of another closed silver door. We were both on the outside. J banged on the door to let us in but nobody heard her. I felt bad; not only had I missed the plane, but I'd caused J to miss it too.

a dream that isn't mine

the dream is my grandmother's. she is sleeping and sleeping and she does not want to wake up. In the dream the radio alarm is going off and she hits the off button repeatedly but the music keeps playing. she wants to stay in bed all day. then she hears a voice that is like her father's and it says: "I___, you have to wake up now." She looks up and there is a man who is her father but he does not look like him. "You have to get up," her father says again, sternly. I___ looks up at him. He is holding two white robes. One is lacy and fancy and one is plain white cotton. "Which robe do you want?" he asks, holding them out to her. I___ looks at both robes and answers, "I'll take the plain one; I don't need that fancy thing," gesturing to the lacy white robe. "Okay," says her father, and he hands her the plain white cotton robe. She takes it just before she wakes up.

In the dream last night there were several parts. In the first part K and I were in a variety of snowy places. They were collegiate and cobbled and winding and I kept asking "are we in Providence? Charlottesville?" And the two girls we were hurrying to follow kept saying "No!" At one point the city appeared to fold in on its side and then it seemed as though it was Kyle or some other small Texas town frayed on one edge by the interstate. But then we were in a large house -- southern, gothic in its architecture with sprawling rooms and columns and porches. It felt hot, and perhaps wet. And then there was another side -- a part of the house that abutted a mall. It was a large mall, like the one in towson, and there were fluorescent -lit cinder block hallways. There was some confusion in one of the bathrooms off the hallway. I was washing socks so that they would be clean to pack. I asked K if he wanted to trade suitcases. I had books in mine and so did he and we thought to switch because at least then they might be light enough to bring. But it seemed unlikely that everything would fit, and our belongings were scattered and dirty and disorganized.

The next part of the dream was like a flap of cardboard that unfolded from the side of a box -- like a book flap. And in this part that unfolds from the dream on a crease that is like the wall of the house, it again becomes a house that is like my grandparents' house and I was following a friend from high school, D. She was blond and gangly like she was all limbs and bare feet and ankles. I was following her up the stairs that had dark oak banisters and multiple flights and landings. And we were going up up up to the highest little attic corner of the house. It was like a secret wing or turret (reminiscent of the little octagonal room in the victorian doll house with the plastic windows) and it was where D's mother slept. When we reached the top there was carpet and quiet like a room that someone slept in but is empty. There was a crumpled silk nightgown on the floor and the bed was unmade. I was aware that we should not be there and that we might get caught. I watched as D tried to slide into a closet in the corner. I knew it was the attic because of the a-frame roof that hung down and tapered toward the white half-door of the closet that D was opening and sliding into with only her bare legs sticking out. This was as we (I was with at least one other girl, maybe J) took to looking at the shelves -- the stacks of papers and books and boxes. Then D was back in the room (which was lit by skylights) and showing us her mother's diary. Her mother seemed to be some sort of astrologer and and she had logged the locations of all of the planets for each day. There were long columns with numbers and hieroglyphic planetary symbols written darkly (like someone had pressed hard) in pencil. These little rows like runes on a tablet. As I was looking I was like "of course she knows the future." And I thought that if D's mother knew the future, than surely she most know that we were here in this room looking at her things. And so at that moment I became even more afraid of getting caught. I crept behind the (curiously) open bedroom door to hide just as D's mother came into the room. I felt too large in the corner and so it was clear that there was no way for me to hide. Meanwhile, D and the other girl had positioned themselves in the middle of the room where they were nonchalantly looking at magazines. "oh mom," D said, looking up, "we just came up her to look at these." She said as if it were nothing. D went on flipping the pages of the magazine and her mother seemed annoyed but not like D was going to be in trouble. But then I came awkwardly out of hiding, smiling big and hard because I couldn't help it and knowing that my emergence made it clear that we were just pretending -- that we really knew we shouldn't be there. And so it was my hiding that actually exposed us all.

In the dream last night my parents' old house was at the beach like a little shack and one end was open and faced the beach as though water could wash in. as thought water had washed in and we had to remove the tidal debris, the dirt and the bits of dried and dead palms. I wanted to show K how we'd arranged it. I thought that she would be impressed with the amount of room. I was also surprised by the amount of room. I am always having dreams in which rooms I do not know about suddenly appear. And when I wake I am disappointed to find that they are gone. It was raining and the power flickered on and off. This house also seemed like my grandparents' house. In my dreams about my grandparents' house there are always neighbors I do not know in the alley.

When we are on the beach, I notice that there are birds whose long necks extend from large round rocks, or perhaps eggs. Perhaps they are like snails who live in their shells. They appear to be eating fish and it is a little grisly, the red flesh and the white crisp bones breaking with a little crunch I can feel in my jaw. I see that one bird is out of the rock/shell/egg, and it is long like a rubber chicken but it is a sea bird, like a heron, but stretchy with long yellow legs, like a rubber chicken.

the dreams this afternoon were all encounters with friends. In one, I was with E and we were running through the complex I live in now (the mushroom houses) but the houses were arranged in the backyard of my childhood home in sc. We ran into the home of another friend, R. Her house/apt was filled with lovely cooking smells and also all these toys from my childhood. She has a child, and the toys were his, but I was marveling at her prescience -- the way she had carefully saved all the toys from her childhood so that her son would have them. There was a picnic basket shaped like a chicken, and a red barn, and blocks and colorful dolls and plastic animals. There was also a sloping area in the middle of her place that was fenced off. It was like a carpeted well. I asked why she had nothing down there and R said that there had been a fire and had been told not to use it. I went and stood in the well and said that I would use it. E and R laughed at me. Then R called us up for snacks -- she had made pancakes for dinner and they were delicious. She also made a pastry that had warm strawberry jam inside.

perhaps the point of the dream is that I ought to be mindful/pay attention to what it is I give away. In the dream last night I was once again in an apartment that seem pre-occupied. In the cupboards there were things like bowls and candlesticks that were not mine. And I was trying to improvise in the bedroom. I had taken a number of multi-colored silk skirts and attempted to make curtains with them. I tried and tried to close them but they were not enough. And when the former occupants returned (all girls, again), they were annoyed. But I did not know the rooms belonged to them. There was confusion. I tried to smooth things over. I had a small glass of spicy vegetable juice (mostly carrot -- it was delicious), and I offered them a sip. I thought that we would pass the glass around. I thought it would come back to me. It did not. They took the glass. I returned to the room with the skirt curtains disappointed. I thought that maybe I should not have offered them the juice. Outside I felt that it was san marcos. That it rained. That the world was no more than shopping centers with crumbling parking lots. I did not know whether to stay or leave, and if I left, I did not know where I would go.

I had a dream of an apolcalyptic sort. I lived on an island replete with hotels and paved concrete corridors that were open (almost like cloverleafs and highway flyovers) and there were also zig-zagged cobble-stone streets of an almost european shape and variety w. restaurants and tourist shops. There was the ocean, but it was violent and stormy and mostly people sat on the beach but did not swim. It seemed dangerous. There were palm trees like outlines or spears. In one of the buildings with the ramp winding upwards, spiral-shaped, there were rooms like dorm rooms. It was hive-like. I felt that many of the buildings on the island were like this. There were many people and the rooms seem randomly assigned. They were also in various states of pre-occupancy. No one seemed to mind. It was crowded and there were lines for things like the bathrooms and showers. It seemed that there were mostly girls who were away from home -- duffel bags and laundry and slouchy cosmetic bags stuffed with toiletries like clear mascara and razor blades. I shared the room with two or three other girls, but I only saw one of them. The room was where teenagers lived and it seemed that I was staying in a room I'd lived in before. Was I a teenager again? I told the one girl I saw in the room where we'd had the furniture. The room seemed to change sizes and dimensions. At one point it opened and seemed much larger. We were frequently coming and going from the room for group events and competitions. I thought about swimming often. Before the apocalypse, I came back when the room was empty to hide a box. The box contained all these personal tangible objects. letters and lockets. I hid my key to the room under a brick in the concrete corridor. The brick was loose from the wall. Then the apocalypse came. Everything was stormy and dust. People were corralled and evacuated. The authorities sealed everything shut. People no longer lived where they had lived before. The old places were vacant and surrounded by chainlink. Still, I came back. It was understood that this was something people would sometimes do -- to wander the old place. I came back to look for the box. The door to the room with the box had been sealed shut. The key that I'd hid under a brick was resealed into a wall and painted green. I knew my key was in the brick wall, but I didn't try to break the wall down. I thought it was hopeless. I went on without trying to get into the room with the box but I knew it was there. Then I couldn't stand it and went to break open the brick wall painted green. The hallway was like the space in those tiers that wrap around baseball stadiums where there are concessions and bathrooms, only it was abandoned. I tried to break the wall. Just then, the other girl with the key emerged from the door. I had known there was another girl with a key and that she would not give it to me. I had known this all along. I had accepted this. But when she was right there, in front of me at this moment of desperation, I tackled her. "I have stuff in there," I told her. She looked at me like she knew, like she had looked at my stuff, that she had spent time with it. Not in a malicious way, but for comfort, which was also what I wanted. I did not hate her. She looked guilty, and I saw that she would change her mind. Whatever the risks of sharing the key with me, it was worth it to share it -- the room-- with someone. Inside the room the world was not so much real as simply that of teenagers. A preserved room. It was full of dust and papers and objects no longer in the world. "How silly we were," I thought, reading the loopy teenaged handwriting, and "how deeply we felt then, when the world was real." The past self I'd forgotten was so happy and unknowing. I cried.

honey bee s.o.s.

This can't be good.

afterthought

where the good was something
you could saw in two
as if the sky could
saw itself in two.

I pulled a string
and remembered the mending
knot, the place where two
braids became unknown.

A barn where floss
in known as mirror, where hay
pulls blood to its mouth
and ovens flood.

Bridle, mistress: no gold
leaf save for that you make
from meat, from vertabrae
unbound --