He dreams the sun leaves earth energy poor
like a moon with no leaves
like a fire with the soul of a dead bluefish
Vibrations refuse to activate the bell
It has no tongue
because he was its tongue
He’s busy dreaming the soft dark night
the silent flood the
grit drift wind
the indefinite number of unregulated pleasures
enumerated by earth
for the very few who stand to perceive them
His job is to fire up the dead fish on a grill
Its soul jumps like fire
into a pile of leaves
The moon
that is the symbol of night
refuses night its imprimatur
The dream is laborious, so makes him feel better
It fills him with vegetable energy
like a shot of wheatgrass
He greets the day
feeling contemporary, powerful, beloved
Elsbeth Pancrazi’s first collection, FULL BODY PLEASURE SUIT, was published by Tavern Books in the Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series in 2017. Pancrazi has been recognized for her writing as a Poets House Fellow and an artist-in-residence at Caldera Arts in Sisters, Oregon. Her poems have been featured in A Public Space, Best New Poets 2013, Sixth Finch, Salt Hill, and other journals.