Coronary Artist (1)

I dream excess - high-speed vision. Snow falling upwards. The bed in a corner of the empty lot. Cut logs careening away from the saw. They know what's waiting for them. A line of introduction. Incomplete arc of contemplation. A family of clothes begging to be picked up. Chimneys at work carrying steam. Ingest coffee, loosen stuck bits of unvoiced flux loved for their silence.

All the great heroes slept late. The common folks get up early and fight for the victory. It takes a lifetime to be steered in this direction; snow is mounting form the sky down. I think the dirty clothes are crying and want to be washed. Piles of clothes begin to mount from the sky down. I would say no, except for the empty chair where taking off is perfected.

The left brin turns the other cheek. The right brain can't imagine it. To be bringing one's face into morning when it is barely light. To promote sunshine to my daughter while surviving my own ferocious will to sleep. This is the corner to turn to the bathroom. This is the sink. I look at myself in the mirror and see the person I might have been had I gotten more sleep. I step back into the world, it is warmer and moister than I thought. It is a whole world, with its own affections, anxieties, welcome.

Custom has it that a woman gets up first to solve the dilemma of the burning moment.

You can smell the smoke answering the alarm. And then you can't smell anything over the family sound track, putting everything on hold. One becomes an adult without knowing the details of how it was done, only knowing which team you're on, which hat corresponds to your glands. Already this is an extinct culture, a culture of giants prone to the vertigo of silent agreements and unenforceable contracts. The rocks in our beds belong to them. Their sexual politics get the better of us sometimes and we are left with dream transcriptions and delinquencies instead of passion outside the parentheses.

We make it to the crossroads only to come to a total stop. The idea we harbor is subversive. That there may be many moments in which we recognize the sources of our hunger, falling out of the sky, a complete thought in the center of our most visible selves.

(c) Erica Hunt, Arcade