34 thoughts on “Poem Up at Kingdoms in the Wild”

  5. Fascinating topic, dreams – if only one could have a recording for replay! “The quickness of night” nails the rapid evaporation of most dream details – though I practice writing down what I do recall upon waking. Your poem sorta is inspiration to take a lingering nap; thanks!

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  7. Congrats on placing this one!

    You say so much by not saying. I recognize the music of your “unsaid,” and feel almost conspiratorial when I hear it, kind of like when I eavesdrop on people speaking French, and they give their secrets away to me exactly because the expression of oblivion on my face is an assurance that I could never repeat what I know, and they’re right about that, but I come away with the sense I got away with something (that same expression has won me a hand or two in poker — little did anyone know my lack of a tell was due to the fact that it takes me 5 minutes to figure out what everyone else knows instantaneously? And anyway, life isn’t poker).

    Yes, this poem is very much like a dream slipping away as you wake (like the strands I’ve been grasping at for the past hour in my attempt to respond here…), in that the only thing there is to hold onto is the fact that you don’t remember, but dearly want to, but can’t… but if you could, the definition of that thing you knew would be listed in a different dictionary, which wouldn’t matter, anyway, because you wouldn’t need to look it up. It’s like realizing long after you folded, and the person with the pair of deuces raked in the chips, that you had a full house — something that’s no more true than if you’d only imagined it, which you very well might’ve…

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    • Thank you, ma’am. I think the sentence fragments function well in this piece – those little bits that aren’t quite fully formed and remain ever elusive – to enhance the dreamlike state. It’s weird how those details work out…

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  9. The first couplet draws me into a feeling of one of the riddles from the Hans Taliesin, a means to reveal the god’s true name, but made simple, by just looking it up in a dictionary. Imagine the look on Bran’s face when someone goes, “is it this one!”

    i mentioned the line “I am brahman, the straight line” in my recent essay, just came to me as more evidence on the importance of the line, but moreover, fitting, as it is as if in that line, the LINE is referring to itself through its agent, Okaji.

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