in the dream things are as they should be
i.
it’s so cold everyone’s bundled
like bank robbers ski masks
and balaclavas one man misread
the email as baklava and sits
on a park bench rubbing honey
and pine nuts into his beard
phyllo crumbs falling down his parka
and across the street
an every-other-weekend dad
makes pancakes for his son promises
the first one is always the worst
the skillet demands a sacrifice
in the apartment upstairs
a woman tells her beloved
she wants to peel apart
his thighs like two slices
of american cheese his whole
heart a purse dog trembling
he wags his pale ass for that
kraft aphrodite inside the post
office a printer cartridge explodes
they’ll have to repaint every
envelope white again
black ink leaves
ellipses everywhere on every
person place or thing
each noun an omission
of words
ii.
in the dream things
are as they should be
a dog swallows its own
leash every pawnshop
ring finds a fat finger
a venus fly trap
convinces the room
it’s more person than plant
grandma’s in the corner
eating poker chips a moth
you nicknamed icarus
cooks against a lightbulb
in the dream your
death is a montage
before a death
the swinging lantern
the flying cinder
fire light billowing
your life collapsing
open like a telescope
I look through
as long as I’m asleep
you aren’t dying
is the most
ordinary thing
STEVEN ESPADA DAWSON is from East Los Angeles and lives in Austin, Texas. He is the son of a Mexican immigrant and is a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow. His recent poems appear in The Adroit Journal, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, Split Lip, Waxwing, and the 2020 Best New Poets anthology.