dream morning Feb 10th


It is morning and I am late for
my paper route. The papers are
stacked together in an interminable
pyramid configured heap on the
corner of Western and Sherman
one block in the direction
of the rising sun from the dream
house where I was conceived
directly across the street
from the house she once arrived
ferrying a pagoda of books
driving a dilapidated vehicle
in tears......

The last three years of junior high
and the first three of high school
I was a paperboy. My father would wake
me up at 4:30 in the morning
and (often together) he would
escort me down the arteries
of West Sherman and Moss,
father and son delivering
scrolled squares of recycable
inks fraught with opinions
and outrage into the
porches of droopy visage
houses, the chill of morning
accompanied by the blush of
clouds in the east
the incendiary bald head
of the sun gradually
illuminating the scalp of
the planet into another
day of chronicled
activity and breath
the bulletin I perched
in their doorway
rubber-banded like a telescope


At least twice a year
I have a dream where
I have overslept and I am
late for my assignment
late for my job as a
paperboy. Worried that
do to my (dreams, my
sleep truancy) I miss
waking up on time for my
route.

In this dream I am
late for my route
and the papers are stacked
like Vedas or snow embankments
on the edge of the street
I am overwhelmed by how many
papers I have yet to deliver.


I walk up to the fountain
of bound newspapers and
realize that I am late,
a week late, a month late
the truss bundles resemble
orphaned babies of expires
print, Moses waiting to
float down the suburban
sidewalks of a middle-class
Nile before being flung
on the welcome matt of
a random americana domicile

AS I waited in the parking
lot of what is now
Khoury’s (pharmacy) the
parking lot of the former 7-11
where I used to deposit quarters
into the winking chrome slits
of the payphones when I was thirteen
dialing long distance to talk
to Ambra Haake, the beautiful
silk-haired radiant skinned
femme who lived 45 minutes
away and who I was too coy
to call in the company of my
own parents being present within
the house.....


In the dream I began to
wade through the bundles of
papers, in a very king of
the mountain third grade
February recess style, until I was
finally on the summit of
clasped exposition and editorial

When I looked down I saw that
Karen Whittier, sixth grade
side-pony tail late
eighties crush
was in the back of a
pick up truck and that
her father was driving.

I then abandoned the mountainous
heap of jaded journalism
and found myself in the back of the
pea-green truck with Karen.
As her father drove our
limbs wriggled out of our
respective raiment and we
began to dip into each
others bodies
wading in a stiff
pier of pubescent skin

As our loins proceeding to
bite and snap and smile
in the back of the truck
I realized that her father was
driving up the the lolling
hills near my grandmother’s house
the house my father was living
in while diagnosed with cancer
the house my mother inherited
still after all this time.