“Oneiroliths” by F.J. Bergmann
There, some could bring back objects
made of physical matter from
the perilous worlds of their dreams:
a madwoman who awoke clutching
a lethal blue flower found only on
mountains thousands of miles away;
a child who, during the week after
her mother’s death, was stroked
by an icy astral hand. She put
that pale hand in a valuable box,
kept the box out in plain sight,
always left the house unlocked.
And a man arose late one morning
to find a basalt sarcophagus, sealed
with lead, that could not have fit
through any door, but was somehow
there in his now-crowded bedroom.
He would often put his ear against
the chilly stone and listen to the rustles
and dulcet whispers that came from
inside, suggesting what a good idea
it would be to open it.
| F.J. Bergmann frequents Wisconsin and fibitz.com. She is the editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (sfpoetry.com), and the poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com). Her most recent chapbook, an illustrated collection of conflated-fairy-tale poems, is Out of the Black Forest (Centennial Press, 2012). |