In Dreams Bare

or barely dreams, I had this second                   or this sec

 

 

to situate the situation; unsatisfy the truth.  

 

 

The final decision came down to stuff.

 

You cannot make things up.

You cannot make.

You cannot.

Cannot.

 

We hinge and jam vowels into too small spaces: you are the bad husband.

 

All day versions of us align:

We use characters; we use stuff but the final arbiter is relief,

right?

I’ll say when this is enough; I’ll say when this is ov—

er … I’ll say when I mean it to end.

Sure, be ambiguous because that might work.

 

 

Assume a conversation with Bukowski; practice defeatism.

 

 

(I always wanted Opium-laced Anais.)

 

 

Look, one story indents all of the others.

 

 

This one is nearly kaput.

Leah Umansky is a New Yorker by birth, a teacher by choice, and an anglophile at heart. She is a contributing writer for both BOMB Magazine’s BOMBLOG and for The Rumpus. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Barrow Street, Women’s Studies Quarterly, BOMBLOG’s “Word Choice,” Cream City Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Magma Poetry (UK), and the anthology The American Voice: Whitman, Williams and Ginsberg.