‘dream sequence I & II’
— Joyce Chong
slip out of my sleeping form / an art exhibit of shotguns hanging like / holy lights and it is Tết
Today, a contemplation on dreams, or nightmares, and family. Written by Iskandar Haggarty and published in Occulum Journal, ‘dream sequence I’ and ‘dream sequence II’ are short, beautiful prose poems as ethereal as their subjects. ‘dream sequence II’ traverses imagery that is both familiar and strange, language moving from one moment to the next seamlessly, like switching places in your sleep, moving in and out of a dream.
sometimes, sadness as breath / sadness as jackals / smiling with teeth like soil / walking upright
Both poems seem to fixate on themes of transition, the space between dream and nightmare, nightmare and reality. When our imaginings begin to look more like our realities, and develop minds of their own. There’s something wonderfully certain and unexpected about the way these poems move, a breathless resolve towards the unknown, and the unknowable.
my antlers shed their velvet / my hooves slip on the wet cobblestones / a single shot rings out crisp