on top of a white maple table a kind mother has arranged bottles tasting of green heat and orange sweet by a soft daybed that is my nest in a room of milk with moonlit eyes and two mirrors, one I can hold in front of my face to see my mind and a large one on the wall so I can see everything I follow her to the bedroom where a jigsaw puzzle is worked in a cloud I feel completed, another piece fits she sees without eyes, speaks without words but were they heard they’d be baby be patient, growing takes time
Pampered
Mike Wilson
3 Questions for Mike
What was your process for creating this work?
These poems apply a journalistic style to dream poems. The poems are literally reportage of dreams as experienced. I add no "symbolic" details to the poems – it's strictly journalism reported in the form of a poem.
What is the significance of the form/genre you chose for this work?
I've learned the trick to remembering my dreams and developed the ability not only to recall them but to enter back into them during the awake state and describe the dreams as they occurred. In other words, I can replay them. I find poetry usually works better than prose to describe the dream experience.
What is the significance of this work to you?
I believe dreams have internal coherence that is valid on its own terms. Trusting the coherence of the dream rather than running it through the intellect like Freud can create art that may tell us something about the creative process. When it works for readers, that's a validating experience for me.
Mike Wilson is author of Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world. He’s a past winner of Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Chaffin/Kash Prize. His work has appeared in many small magazines, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Mud Season Review, The London Reader, and The Ocotillo Review. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky.