A Blizzard That Brings More Than Snow
The world got wavy like that cheap trick
in movies when a character dreams.
It wasn’t a dream though, because I was fat,
and my best dreams are when my girth disappears.
I sat on the couch, heavy
in the head, my wife learning Thai,
the language program spitting
sentences at her. Is the man wearing a red shirt?
No, the man is wearing a yellow shirt.
If this were my mother’s dream,
my wife would not have to deal with the man
in the red or yellow shirt, not have to sit
at the computer, clicking the cursor
over correct answers. She would not even be white,
and we would not live upstate New York,
in the middle of a blizzard burying everything.
What I wanted last night was for the room to stop
spinning and for the dinner I ate
to stay in my stomach. What I wanted—truly wanted—
was too numerous to recount.
A childhood friend, one I’ve lost,
said about women at a pool hall, I want them,
every single one of them. You know what I mean?
Last night, I had never wanted more badly,
all the wants I had forgotten and misplaced
piling up and whirling in my head, piling
up and sticking to my brain, like snow clinging
to the evergreen outside sagging
under all that weight. Is the snow white?
Yes, the snow is white.
And heavy.
And spinning.
