Pressed to the Bed
This dream,
at the fair, was
built of many tents:
a man who’d never seen clouds,
a gypsy
hopemonger, a peddler
from the flea markets;
a Dixieland band
playing gospel
followed us
with blood of the lamb
in a samovar;
we were bathed;
the knowing music
pressed us towards
the fortune
teller: swatches
of memory
formed people:
they were named
passively as
Alternative Country;
Losing Ground; the Great Works
of Heaven; the Manifest Past;
the man who’d never seen clouds
whispered a rain prayer,
whispered wake up;
Alternative Country told
how this dream was prison,
Losing Ground how when I wake
no one will remember the constant sky,
everyone slipping through
the Manifest Past glorious into the Great Works of Heaven.
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James Everett says, “Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, I felt a certain loss of entertainment in my teenage years, and like others, I’m sure, I dreamt of bigger cities. High school was drinking and parties in cow fields, abandoned lots, construction sites for new subdivisions. Once a hay barrel was set on fire and to my recollection I never went cow tipping. I started writing poems I’m not sure when, and left home for Davidson College on a creative writing scholarship. In the past year or so I’ve worked contracted labor, managed a wine bar, taught at a community college, been a personal assistant and office task force and gardened for money. Currently, I’m a Grisham Fellow in the M.F.A. program at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. I live with my dog Zoe, a black mutt and reveler of mud puddles.”
James Everett was nominated for Poets Under 30 by Beth Ann Fennelly.
