Somnia Poem by Ron Winkler

a few images I got tangled in: heavenly bodies that radiated
significance almost performatively. aching gods,
their clenched fists red
like mouth cavities in the hands of catarrh. meteorite merchants
who, to widen their horizons, spent afternoons
in psychotomography and improvised songs
on the basis of the protocols. and attended exhibitions
where they could practice new forms of petting.
abstract dreams about the era of Papillon architecture.
Peruvian women (Mao ascendent) who wanted to make a Peru
out of Peru. protodidacts with beards
like declarations of love for the English lawn,
the American front yard, Scandinavian moss, they awakened
a sense of being plucked right out of time.
shadows of shadows of their own. dreams. gallerinas
in the same line of work as the ones who brought the grandmothers'
swans to completion. in forests
filled with the exhaust of dreams, in which I
drove down hundred-lane paths from atheism
to Eden. flanked
by anti-dreamers, who were glad to have gotten themselves lost
in the uniqueness of uniformity. and who crackled
or emitted a feeble light
like wonderful words. they glanced at the ground
as if someone had robbed them of their avatars.
for a long time before I woke up, it snowed
air.
Translation: JD Schneider