The Medium's Trance Poem by Caroline Misner

A terrible convulsion, then
my vision is complete:
boneless as a shark,
all flex and gristle,
and so thick that even their teeth
cannot chew through
the tough dense fabric,
rough as burlap,
a hauntless sack of dreams.

There is no fear here,
no fury or awareness at all,
just staticky images, faces,
hands, coming clear of mists
then fading; fading and bleeding
of colour, such as a rose
bleeds of its perfume
following fall’s first frost.
All these effigies dump their loads

of autobiographies at my feet
in corridors of damaged perspectives;
they are neither dumb nor deaf:
they don’t see me
but they keep well enough
to themselves. My eye
a planet orbiting through
ribbons of time and dragging
them back like an umbilical cord.