Poem: So Implausible

Some of my dreams are driving dreams, along roads, winding or switchbacks. I did drive the Oregon highway. That was fifteen or so years ago, and it was spectacular. The "you" here is Seattle friend, and of course me. I dreamed "you." This is a dream poem and real. I was born in a speakeasy (former) on Long Island, where F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dr. Eckleburg loomed, though not, for me, until years after I left (at age eight).

So Implausible

I rode north on the Oregon highway
last night, to clapboard, yellow like
Dr. Eckleburg’s frames in the valley of ashes
off the Long Island Sound.
Got showed around but couldn’t fathom
the kind breeders’ address for a thank-you,

forgot and found lodging, then
curly roads fog-lit a cavernous basement
deep with nameless and chatty extras.
It was a road trip for two but I left and
motored toward home, figured you’d

be okay, didn’t really care, would live on
without me, as if mere endurance
were the point. For once I got real and through
waters of ice pushed to you (you

you you you), drop dead gorgeous
and fat. I returned to the speakeasy (which
I was born in on the Long Island Sound).
The displaced Oregon duo gave me a mixmaster
with a broken bowl.
Too polite to decline, I used it for eggs

in the part of the dream where a dog jumpstarts
my comely life (please refuse to think of me
otherwise) so implausible to so many.

Sarah Sarai, pub. in Ghoti