PDF Release of My Dream of You Issue 19

I am pleased to announce the release of the Fall 2021 Issue.

The poets with work in the My Dream Of You edition are:

Virginia Aronson
Rose Mary Boehm
Jeff Burt
Joe Cottonwood
Holly Day
Edilson Ferreira
Charles Halsted
John Huey
Kathleen Latham
Ron. Lavalette
John Maurer
Michael J. Leach
Joan Mazza
Karla Linn Merrifield
Kate Meyer-Currey
Michael Minassian
John Muro
Heather Sager
Tricia Sankey
Emil Sinclair
Debi Swim
Ivor Steven
Alan Toltzis
Mark Tulin
Alan Walowitz
Robert Walton

You may download a copy of the PDF release here.

My Dream of You Fall 2021 Issue 19

You’re invited to submit to our new issue, titled A Change of World. Read submission guidelines here. You may also find us over at the other site at Red Wolf Editions. Happy writing!

Irene Toh
Editor
Fall 2021

Census of Dreams, by Alan Walowitz

Census of Dreams
by Alan Walowitz

The dream is a lie, but the dreaming is true.
Robert Penn Warren

Where are you calling from tonight?
Another place I haven’t been awake,
but play the perfect host
adrift in a world I claim I never made:
I nod, tip my hat, and soon I’m gone.

Sure, the dream feels real–
enough to wash me from the first of dawn,
through day’s uneasy peace,
till creak of porch in stale night air
stills an unrequited yawn.

But end of another endless day,
brings no rest I dreamed
and fills my head like a waiting room
where lost friends are counted
for the long journey home.

Instead, all peace I sought gets dashed
on a jagged thought, skipped breath,
late night call and no one there.
And you, last dream to the door,
ask nothing but to leave alone.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written both trans-continentally, and mostly remotely, with poet Betsy Mars.

Somewhere, Anywhere, by Jeff Burt

Somewhere, Anywhere
by Jeff Burt

It’s natural to think the thread of a spider that wafts
from a dying oak branch toward a blueberry bush
is cast like an anchor from one ship to a floor,

but the filament is spun as it drifts, the spider is not in safety
on deck but riding the forefront whiffed by the breeze
eyes set on nowhere in particular or a vague set of greenery

where chances of prey are plentiful, being prey are few.
They are the perpetual first astronauts launched
in a cone on the top of a rocket screaming into space,

Not a void as in nothing in it, but void as in empty of experience.
My ancestors from Sweden took trips in the dark night
and ill holds of transports with all the other poor farmers

for a vague territory on a map of the western Great Lakes,
not attached to a tow line that could snap them back to Sweden,
but riding the deck, splashed with spray, to an unseen port,

like yearling whales on ancient and epic excursions
ribbing sea’s mountains and shoals following the same
genetic geographic destiny without a clue of a resting place.

Even today at the 7th Avenue stoplight
I think of being taught detachment from desire
will enable us, but to what when we do not desire?

We feed on want and wish like fire eats oxygen
and bound carbon until the flame poofs out.
Bound carbon—that is what we are anyway,

waiting to be unleashed, our DNA demanding
the chains be sparked into explosion,
to do, to act, to have something other than.

Other than—to be other than what we are.
Some of us are not meant to stay on the dying oak
or strung on a taut string in comfort.

Some of us are not meant to farm the old land.
Some of us are meant to launch into the air
screaming as we head to who knows where.

The red light changes. I walk. I dream
I have somewhere, anywhere, to go.

Source: A street corner moment

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California with his wife. He has contributed previously to Red Wolf Journal, Williwaw Journal, Heartwood, and many other journals.

Dreaming of a Northern Spring in the Subtropics, by Rose Mary Boehm

Dreaming of a Northern Spring in the Subtropics
by Rose Mary Boehm

A month or so before winter stencils the almost bare
branches of the ash in anticipation of silver-green turning
to black and brown, when the muddy earth waits patiently for its
feed of ash mulch, when the worms retire from the surface
to prepare their survival deep in the warm earth, everything
is ready, expecting death and rebirth. The centipedes huddle
under the mountain of firewood just delivered, the river rats
dig into the Styrofoam-covered ceiling, the last of the autumn
apples are rotting between brown tufts of grass, while the fox
barely remembers his friendship with the wolf dog. They’d danced
only one summer. The sun hangs low, the moon a faint Cheshire cat
rising behind the mountain, the poppy seeds rattling in their pods.
The ravens croak overhead, steering with their diamond tails.
The bird-scare guns are silent—no longer protecting harvests.
There is a sharp scent of snow in the air, for now a warning,
and the swifts dip their wings in yet another goodbye.

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fourth poetry collection, The Rain Girl, was published in 2020. Her fifth, Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders, has just been snapped up by Kelsay Books for publication May/June 2022. Her website: https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

The True Nature of Imaginary Things, by Alan Toltzis

The True Nature of Imaginary Things
by Alan Toltzis

Imaginary rats lurk in my kitchen.
These rats lack something:
Guile. Purpose. Intent.
I worry I’ll tread on one in the dark.
I flick the lights and bristle,
sensing a rat, slick with sickness,
in the corner.
A ridge of fur stiffens and glistens
along the curve of its spine.
Early one morning, I startle another one.
Tiny feet click-click-click, like gravel
strewn across tile, when it tries to dart
under a table.
There is no table in my kitchen.
The rat freezes midway across the Saltillo tile floor.
It means no harm. Imaginary evil never does.
Rats are too busy with rat business;
with being a rat.
Once, a friend caught one in a trap,
drove to the lake, submerged it for 10 minutes,
and left it there.
The rat beat him home.

Alan Toltzis is the author of two poetry collections—49 Aspects of Human Emotion and The Last Commandment—and two chapbooks, Nature Lessons and Mercy (forthcoming). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications including, Plainsong, Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Black Bough Poetry, and Anthropocene Poetry. Alan is an editor of The Mizmor Anthology. After a lifetime in Philadelphia, he now lives in Los Angeles. Find him online at alantoltzis.com; follow him @ToltzisAlan.

Song Without Moonlight, by Alan Toltzis

Song Without Moonlight
by Alan Toltzis

I try to overcome
my natural reticence
but words stick in my throat.

For two months
the moon hasn’t found me.
I’ve stopped looking for her.
Is it low clouds,
the angle of the eaves,
a skewed viewpoint?

The ocean rocks uneasy tonight,
uncertain when to rush the shore,
when to cower and hide.
Drizzle settles on shriveled wild plums,
dotting the dunes. It’s six months
until fresh ones take their place,
a mixture of ripe and rot
abuzz with flies.

A trickle of salty, silvery mist
beads up on resinous clusters
of poisonous bayberries,
redolent with temptation.

Tonight, I will become a warbler
and choke gray-green berries
down my throat whole.

Alan Toltzis is the author of two poetry collections—49 Aspects of Human Emotion and The Last Commandment—and two chapbooks, Nature Lessons and Mercy (forthcoming). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications including, Plainsong, Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Black Bough Poetry, and Anthropocene Poetry. Alan is an editor of The Mizmor Anthology. After a lifetime in Philadelphia, he now lives in Los Angeles. Find him online at alantoltzis.com; follow him @ToltzisAlan.

Earth Bound, by Alan Toltzis

Earth Bound
by Alan Toltzis

One night, I will swap pillows
for rocks and dream
of angels, God, and heaven.
For now, the sky is heavy
with fret. The weight of earth
falls from invisible cracks
feathering my ceiling. Plaster dust
rims my eyes most mornings.

Alan Toltzis is the author of two poetry collections—49 Aspects of Human Emotion and The Last Commandment—and two chapbooks, Nature Lessons and Mercy (forthcoming). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications including, Plainsong, Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Black Bough Poetry, and Anthropocene Poetry. Alan is an editor of The Mizmor Anthology. After a lifetime in Philadelphia, he now lives in Los Angeles. Find him online at alantoltzis.com; follow him @ToltzisAlan.

Waking Dream in Alesund, Norway, by Karla Linn Merrifield

Waking Dream in Alesund, Norway
by Karla Linn Merrifield

When moon casts shadows on castles,
quoth then old raven to young raven,
There is something I know.

Troll-men may ride hard their wolves,
snapping a bridle of braided snakes.
So it is. But so it once was

eagles screamed in the rain
and a heroine was born
to slay snakes, wolves, trolls

of our imagination.

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 900+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the 2019 full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY).

Lion Dreams, by Joe Cottonwood

Lion Dreams
by Joe Cottonwood

Harvey didn’t walk, he lunged
like a puppet, strung loose. Spastic.
Couldn’t hit a baseball to save his life.
He asked questions like “If a lion eats you,
do you enter the lion’s soul?
If the lion dreams, do you dream?
When you come out as lion shit,
are you double-dead?”
We, each weird in our own way.
Me, I got grade-school famous
for kicking a bully in the balls.

Now this grassy park overlooking the Pacific
a continent’s width from grade school.
I’m sitting on a black metal bench
eating a KFC drumstick.
A man beside me with short white beard,
white hair in a ponytail, tossing popcorn
to strutting doves, says
“If you eat chicken, do you swallow chicken soul?”
and I say “Harvey! Holy lion shit!”

We shake hands. His arm jerks at the elbow,
loose-jointed. Grip firm.
“I teach Theology at Long Beach,” he says.
“I fix houses,” I say. “Rehab.”
“You remove the rot. Funny,” he says,
“how we become what we are
before we even know we are.
We are lions. All lions.”

Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints. joecottonwood.com

I humiliated myself, by Joe Cottonwood

I humiliated myself
by Joe Cottonwood

at a gathering of neighbors
never mind what I said

They were polite
but made it clear I blew it
My wife among them
says What were you thinking
which is the problem—
I wasn’t

She loves me
as one loves a smelly dog
missing one leg
who can no longer chase squirrels
but lying on my side, legs outstretched
with little yips
in my dreams
my four legs twitch

She sees them
too

Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints. joecottonwood.com