Kathleen Hellen
looking at trees in a dream
can’t see the idiom for trees, like tweets
political distraction, but this is old-
fashioned, dreaming I was guardian
holding on to something, the general feeling,
my own nature featured in the shortened trees,
dead leaves, windy. A testing ground. The answer
to desire. A place to hide in hard times. A simpler
way of life that’s not a walkthrough, not a screenshot,
a way far away from all the trouble when greenery escapes me
– with lines taken and adapted from the Dream Dictionary
when in [the] name of award, eg Oscar for best actress
(lines adapted from a style guide to the Oscars in The Guardian)
Take 1.
you flirt with the voyeurs, play to your advantage
the category
17 and 25 respectively
you roll toward sentience
play until the contract
is more than just acquaintance
what powers don’t you have?
“the girl” inscrutable, insensible, quivering flesh
that bargains for the plattered head…
the floosy dancing for the legions of believers--
princess of burlesque, the veiled fatale
dancing on your hands like gypsy acrobats
the tease in glimpses--
Take 2.
over time, a manual of sensible advice mutates
the editing of flesh no longer flattered
28 and 35 respectively
you loiter at the corners of auditions, the California
sun, giving you the brush,
the way the famed director once
loved you deeply, briefly—not enough
you star in the hysterical
your dead-sea eyes
dulled with street apothecaries
sunglasses the accusation
in a backdrop slightly cheap, tawdry
the voyeur as the hero
can’t see the idiom for trees, like tweets
political distraction, but this is old-
fashioned, dreaming I was guardian
holding on to something, the general feeling,
my own nature featured in the shortened trees,
dead leaves, windy. A testing ground. The answer
to desire. A place to hide in hard times. A simpler
way of life that’s not a walkthrough, not a screenshot,
a way far away from all the trouble when greenery escapes me
– with lines taken and adapted from the Dream Dictionary
when in [the] name of award, eg Oscar for best actress
(lines adapted from a style guide to the Oscars in The Guardian)
Take 1.
you flirt with the voyeurs, play to your advantage
the category
17 and 25 respectively
you roll toward sentience
play until the contract
is more than just acquaintance
what powers don’t you have?
“the girl” inscrutable, insensible, quivering flesh
that bargains for the plattered head…
the floosy dancing for the legions of believers--
princess of burlesque, the veiled fatale
dancing on your hands like gypsy acrobats
the tease in glimpses--
Take 2.
over time, a manual of sensible advice mutates
the editing of flesh no longer flattered
28 and 35 respectively
you loiter at the corners of auditions, the California
sun, giving you the brush,
the way the famed director once
loved you deeply, briefly—not enough
you star in the hysterical
your dead-sea eyes
dulled with street apothecaries
sunglasses the accusation
in a backdrop slightly cheap, tawdry
the voyeur as the hero
© Copyright Kathleen Hellen 2019
Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country was the Color of My Skin (2018), the award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Nominated for two Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net, and featured on Poetry Daily, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Manchester Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, and West Branch, among others. Hellen has won the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. For more on Kathleen see kathleenhellen.com