Issue 8, Summer/Autumn 2009

Learning to Separate Things
by Deborah Poe

She dreams she is being sawn in half—not seen but split. But halved most certainly. Wakes up in the Indian Ocean, thinking oh what a silly name. Naked and clinging. How one hated the clinging. A hotel keycard clenched in her teeth. Most of all it’s the feeling though she can’t shake. The way her dreams weave their geist geist all through a day. Not least of which today. Worm your way into this, she thought, lipping the cardkey a little further back to near tickle the uvula. And the door now acting as raft. Midmorning struck her forehead in such a way she could feel high noon coming on. In her mind the song from The Good the Bad and The Ugly. That which was not was clothed. She did not have a house or for that matter hotel. She did not have the clothes or the memory of taking them off. She did not have her body in two parts, though she might have felt her heart so. Indian Ocean. Nameless frontier. The door sought her out, as if opening her heart which also acted as her raft. Another waft of dream, like the smell of bacon crisped, and the door stood on its other end. She reached for the doorknob, closed her eyes, wondered what opening comes to. As if briefly skiing on her feet, she slid the keycard out of her mouth, into her hand, through the slide. Of course the door opened, and of  course it pulled closed behind. A two-faced lie was behind that door. Lie de lay lay dee dee low lie, she almost sang out loud to the previously evoked tune. Song. Black sky I mean a sky I’d swear is suspended in black sky, she saw. Just one patch of green grass deep forest green island of green. Mini island. Size of a city fountain circle. And on it lay four red apples. And on it also a little tree. Green-leaved tapered arrowheads. Red apples like arrogant cherries. Eve’s basket on the ground long left behind. Adam nowhere to be found.