"Body of Dreams"
the white noise of water aerators. I hear the sounds
and feel a swimming sensation in my chest, a video
fiction, a trick I play on myself—orange, silver-gray,
and white ghost bodies—on each body that, fanlike,
tails the head, fanlike appendages—carp, perhaps thirty,
roiling around—one extends its jaws before its face
as a human person might lick the inside of his lips.
My dream ends with my father like a batman hero
swan diving off the roof of the building
on which we speak—incapable of flight, choosing pain
in place of death that would not yet come. I saw him jump
but didn't hear the sound of his body hitting the earth.
.
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Peter Streckfus is the author of The Cuckoo. He teaches at the University of Alabama.
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