<div class="line">In my dreams</div>
<div class="line">I don’t wear glasses</div>
<div class="line">or if I do, they are invisible</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">though in real life</div>
<div class="line">whatever that is</div>
<div class="line">I wear glasses everywhere,</div>
<div class="line">even to bed</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">I still can’t see the smallest letters in my books</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">Even with my glasses,</div>
<div class="line">I am somehow fifty-two years old</div>
<div class="line">and rotting</div>
<div class="line">eyes as dim as the moon in water</div>
<div class="line">teeth the color of tea</div>
<div class="line">a hairless head that looks like a skull</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">I remember</div>
<div class="line">I used to be able to see quite well</div>
<div class="line">but now my dreams, my life,</div>
<div class="line">are both like the television of my childhood,</div>
<div class="line">everyone a few feet away, no close-ups</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">I have to hold books away from me</div>
<div class="line">it looks as if I’m afraid I’ll spill them on my shirt</div>
<div class="line">but really I just can’t see print</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">and people too</div>
<div class="line">I hold away from me</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">My middle age</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">has almost no kissing</div>
<div class="line">even less than a game show</div>
<div class="line">where occasionally people forget themselves with greed and happiness</div>
<div class="line">When I was young, my dream</div>
<div class="line">was to live a life of adventure:</div>
<div class="line">Paris, broken windows, champagne, the moon</div>
<div class="line">tree branches in the wind</div>
<div class="line">love letters hidden inside a woman’s blouse,</div>
<div class="line">dogs chasing horses</div>
<div class="line">a boat in the harbor, but</div>
<div class="line">who can see—</div>
<div class="line">at this distance</div>
<div class="line">if the hanging sail is a message?</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">My real life is like a sitcom</div>
<div class="line">everyone holding coffee mugs</div>
<div class="line">and <span style="font-style: italic;">trying</span> to be funny,</div>
<div class="line">lines delivered</div>
<div class="line">to my cup of tea</div>
<div class="line">years go by</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">ha ha ha</div>
<div class="line">(the obvious and grisly fact,</div>
<div class="line">much repeated,</div>
<div class="line">that the laughter we hear</div>
<div class="line">on TV shows</div>
<div class="line">belongs to a studio audience</div>
<div class="line">recorded sixty years ago or more</div>
<div class="line">It’s the sound of dead people laughing)</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">They say we don’t invent the faces we see</div>
<div class="line">in dreams,</div>
<div class="line">just remember them</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">so all these people and dogs I talk to</div>
<div class="line">I must have met</div>
<div class="line">or walked past them</div>
<div class="line">in an airport</div>
<div class="line">on the street</div>
<div class="line">somewhere</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">I’m just remembering remembering remembering</div>
<div class="line">though when I dream that I am flying</div>
<div class="line">or doing the breaststroke at the bottom of the sea</div>
<div class="line">That is something new</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">I dream sometimes</div>
<div class="line">about my coworkers</div>
<div class="line">who, in my dreams,</div>
<div class="line">are all secretly in love with me</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">many uncomfortable confessions</div>
<div class="line">most recently in a dark closet, the buttons of our shirts touching</div>
<div class="line">her voice a whisper swinging birdlike around me</div>
<div class="line">which has never happened</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">Zhuangzi said he wasn’t sure</div>
<div class="line">if he were an old man dreaming</div>
<div class="line">a life made of flowers and bending sunlight</div>
<div class="line">or if he was a butterfly</div>
<div class="line">dreaming he was an old man</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">Who’s to say?</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">Real life</div>
<div class="line">whatever that is</div>
<div class="line">not something I could have ever imagined</div>
<div class="line">just remembered</div>
<div class="line">though</div>
<div class="line">incompletely</div>
<div class="line">like when I pick up a thread or button from the closet floor</div>
<div class="line">and it looks familiar</div>
<div class="line">but I don’t know where it has come from</div>
<div class="line">even when I pass my hands from shirt to shirt</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">what is this life</div>
<div class="line">that leaves so little</div>
<div class="line">behind</div>


On Loved Ones Telling the Dying to ‘Let Go’

Election Day

I Have Seen You in My Dreams

<div class="line">the moon</div>
<div class="line">in water</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">jumped like a fish</div>


The Dramatic Cashier

Prayer for an Inmate of RVJDC

A Dream

<p class="epil"><i>to Sherman Alexie</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><b>1.</b> Sherman Alexie, I read that the Washington Redskins are finally going to change their name. This doesn’t affect me much because I live in Singapore. <b>2.</b> All of the Indians I know are from India. <b>3.</b> Still, I often think about the way we talk about skin because I’m half-Chinese, my wife is from New Hampshire, and our son was born in Ethiopia. <b>4.</b> He is seven. As we watch the World Cup, he keeps saying he wants to play for Africa. Each time, I say: “Africa’s not a country.” <b>5.</b> When I was 22 I lived in Africa, in a country called Mauritania. Some Mauritanians still kept slaves. It was an open secret. It was hot there, and the air was full of sand. People wore long robes and many women only showed their eyes and fingertips in public. I once locked eyes with a woman across the market and somehow knew she was smiling at me. I knew it. I ached to see her skin. I ached. <b>6.</b> Six months later, I found myself at the edge of the rain forest just south of the Equator. I lived in a tiny bungalow in Gabon and drank beer on the porch. It was hot there too. We danced the zouk at night. <b>7.</b> I fell in love with a Bateke girl. Bateke was her tribe. I sent a picture home, and one of my uncles commented that she looked like Tracy Chapman “with that pickaninny hair.” <b>8.</b> In Gabon, I had no books, but I did have an old issue of National Geographic. One article began with a photograph of a Japanese man in blue jeans standing beside his baby’s crib. The Tokyo skyline filled the window behind him. My girlfriend picked up the magazine and asked, “Is this you?” <b>9.</b> Sherman Alexie, you once said it made you sad when you went to England and no one recognized you for an Indian anymore. You felt you were the only Spokane Indian for 5,000 miles. <b>10.</b> And yet, how tiresome it is to constantly find ourselves sorted by color, like Easter eggs or paint chips. My grandparents emigrated from Guangzhou, but my mother was born in Dallas. My father was a red-headed Hoosier. What tribe am I? <b>11.</b> I was hurt when my girlfriend only saw my skin, my straight hair, my eyes. We’d been together for months. <b>12.</b> Her skin was a beautiful brown, but I wasn’t interested in its color; I was interested in how it would feel against my chest. I worked hard to see her naked, but it didn’t feel like work because we made each other laugh, and it was the first time I’d ever sung to a girl. I’d never touched a Caesarian scar before, but I had scars of my own. <b>13.</b> Everything seemed so simple for a while, and then it wasn’t. After I said good-bye, I wept like a child on the crowded train. <b>14.</b> So, anyway, why can’t it be the Washington Americans? Sherman Alexie, you’re a wise man; tell me the answer. There are only three people in my tribe, and we look nothing like one another.</p><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/HuntingtonRedskins.mp3"></audio></figure>

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November 4, 2022A DreamChris Huntington

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November 4, 2022A DreamChris Huntington

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