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Inappropriate Dreams

I can’t tell you

how often.

You in the grocery store

embarrassing

everyone with

the lettuce.

Elsewhere, food

in the file folders.

It’s not supposed to

be there, get it?

Another time you

were rolling down a hill

like a blueberry

rolling toward

me, a bear who will

eat anything

this time of year

but wants

just you. Then

you are not you but

the plum of a pebble

that I skipped

into the lake

and found somehow

night after night.

from Our AndromedaFind it in the library

Copyright © 2012 Brenda Shaughnessy
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Published in Brenda Shaughnessy Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.