Dream 1: In which he annoys her
It was New Year’s Eve when he showed up,
in the sleety weather, in his old flannels,
to knock on our door again. You’re back!
my wife cried. I missed you! He laughed,
and as they hugged he lifted her gently
into the air—that’s when she remembered
he was dead. She stopped crying, annoyed
at his ruse, annoyed that this was the day,
of all days, when the ruses of our dead
would be exposed. Still, for a full minute—
after waking but before opening her eyes—
she let him keep holding her in the air.
Dream 2: In which he makes her laugh
She and her estranged sister were in a café,
perusing a menu that took the form
of a tarot deck, when he came shuffling in.
They had expected him—it was a place
he’d recommended—but he sat in a corner,
at a school desk, looking not at them
but at the door. At first he seemed bloated,
too pink, but when he laughed he was normal,
and so my wife laughed too—even her dour
sister laughed. All of this was normal, for this
was the café where the laughter of the dead
escapes from the throats of the living.
Dream 3: In which he bores her to tears
He’d left us some land with houses on it,
shacks really, but she loved them like palaces.
One, thanks to some leak, had filled to the eaves,
become an aquarium. In the window of another,
just above a car on blocks amid weeds,
she spied a younger version of my father
practicing an unfamiliar style of yoga,
and her heart rose: So he’s not dead!
But when she remembered that he was,
she grew bored—with him, with the whole
tedious yoga of the dead—as she waited
for him to rise from his long savasana.
Geoffrey Brock is the author of three books of poems, most recently After; the editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry; and the translator of more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and comics.
