share


Sleepwalking through the Mekong

I have my hands out in front of me.

I’m lightly patting down everything

I come across. I somehow know the

banana shake when I touch it.

 

I can see myself from above.

As if on a video monitor.

Why?

 

I travel slowly down every alley,

across every rice paddy,

into and through every bedroom,

into and through every closet.

I am asleep and yet I am polite.

 

electronica

 

rain showers

 

It is always like this.

I wear a light brown suit.

When I come upon you I grope you

for what seems like ten minutes.

As you have noticed.

But I am excused because I am asleep.

It is understood I am harmless.

I am like a blind reverend.

I am like a politician.

A ten-year-old girl detains me

in the park. She carefully clips

each of my fingernails.

 

When I yawn the earth rumbles.

I pat cans in your pantry.

It is said sparks can be seen

coming from my briefcase.

But I do not carry a briefcase.

I am not like that.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is an American poet from Livingston, Montana. He is the author of Can You Relax in My House, Yes, Master, and Thin Kimono.

READ NEXT

Interview

February 2017

Interview with Hajra Waheed

Rebecca Travis

Interview

February 2017

This conversation with Hajra Waheed began in person with an opportune meeting at her Montreal studio in April 2016....

Essay

March 2019

Dreaming Reasonably: on Jenny George

Rachael Allen

Essay

March 2019

In Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror film The Descent, a group of women go spelunking and become trapped deep underground...

fiction

March 2017

Snow

Hoda Barakat

TR. Marilyn Booth

fiction

March 2017

Hoda Barakat’s The Kingdom of this Earth turns to the history of Lebanese Maronite Christians, from the Mandate period...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required