Erin Carlyle

IN DREAM PT. 1

Scientists talk to people 
in their dreams. I read this 

today and imagined
people in white

coats, behind glass, and my body
under a thin white

blanket. They murmur low 
so they don’t wake me,

scribble notes on white
pieces of paper clipped 

onto clipboards. They ask
questions, simple at first:

what is your name? Can you
count to ten? After a while,

they become more complicated,
confusing: Where is your father?

Are the stars like his beard? Is there 
a way between worlds? 

I don’t know what answers 
would come up

from the thickness of my dreams,
my words through heavy rain 

clouds, gurgle out—water in lungs.

Erin Carlyle whose roots are in the American South, and her poetry can be found in journals such as New South, Bateau Press, and Prairie Schooner. She holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University, and her debut full-length collection, Magnolia Canopy Otherworld, is out now on Driftwood Press.