Elevator Dream

Author: Jayce Russell

Some nights, the train rattles off the nightstand,

following its tracks to the termite-chewed boards

beneath our sleep. I have dreamed my friend a face

at the center of a red wheel, some fourteen feet in diameter,

rolling with a smile through town. You have dreamed

elevators crashing. Or plummeting. 

When morning comes, I’ll swear to it: from here on,I only learn real words, that can be used in real sentences,

strong enough to describe when a mountain lifts its peak

on entering a dusty saloon. Hard to imagine the plain

it left behind, the small and bloody settlements

where women in bonnets, men in string bow ties

and children in overalls… Maybe. Maybe what we allow

is only what we can no longer resist. Some nights,

a car crash, gun shots, barely move my eyelids.

Jaycee Russell serves as poetry warlock for the literary journal Outlook Springs.