Dreams, State Violence, Windchimes
after “Fate, Federal Court, Moon” by Anne Carson
Dreams about studying cuneiform. Dreams about using the wrong side of the knife to scrape bread. Dreams about loss. Dreams about bodies that are not sexual, but feel sexual. Dreams about a road that goes nowhere. Dreams about meeting the president and asking him, do you know how many people you’ve killed? Dreams in which my friends are deported. Dreams about doctoring. Dreams about chemistry. Dreams about the moon. Dreams about my father as a doctor, a chemist, an astronaut, a president, a poet, a man who hates poetry. Dreams about waking up from a dream only to realize the dream continues. Dreams in which the colors run together. Dreams about trees. Dreams about telling my dreams to Freud, and he says all dreams about the moon are about my father. Dreams about loving someone I don’t recognize. Dreams about failing to recognize someone I love. Dreams in which my friends are teargassed on the streets of L.A. Dreams about meeting Annes: Carson, Boyer, Lamott, Frank. Dreams about crying in airports. Dreams about saying goodbye. Dreams about windchimes. Dreams in which one of the Annes invites me to a funeral. Dreams in which I’ve never been to a funeral. Dreams in which my friends are taken away and interrogated. Freud says all dreams about state violence are about my father. Dreams in which one of the Annes says, I’ll come back tomorrow when you’re feeling more yourself. Dreams about being myself. Dreams about being someone else: my neighbor from childhood, my most beloved friend, one of the Annes, a grey cat, a father. Freud says all dreams about my father are about love. Dreams in which the Annes tell me the pain of unrequited love, which every lover has experienced, and we gather in a circle and hold hands, we weep, we comfort each other, I ask them does life get better after a loss and they tell me they can’t tell me, no one knows, one of them says what kind of loss and I say I can’t put it into words because the loss is still growing, the worst of the loss is as yet only imagined but I dream about it every night, in smoke and the sound of bullets, in Salvadoran prisons, in American concentration camps, in the eyes of my friends, my beloved. Dreams about going to funerals. Dreams about a poem.

Desiree Remick holds a BFA in creative writing from Southern Oregon University. She is also the fiction editor of Nude Bruce Review. Before going to college, she taught fencing, picked cones for the forest service, and worked with a partner to translate poetry from Japanese to English. Her writing has won awards, most recently Bacopa Literary Review’s Free Verse Poetry Award, and has appeared in Thirteen Bridges, The Avenue, Westchester Review, and other places. Find her on Instagram @remick_writes.