eleven poems from night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis
from a word to the reader:
night thoughts is an exploration of the dreaming mind. It is also an intimate memoir, describing the evolution of a psychoanalysis and the events that gave rise to that treatment. It gives the reader a set of dream poems, then notes and an index of images.
from the Notes:
….
The dreams rarely referred to my present life: they drew me into the long past.
The dreams told in these poems are parts of dreams— for me the memorable and iconic parts… I had many, many more dreams with similar imagery; the poems describe the dreams that seemed to matter most.
I came to understand that the mind seeks to disguise and conceal what is too painful or shaming to endure–and at the same time offers up clues to the secret. The clues appear in troubling dreams or disrupt the sane mind with their terrors.
The linked poems below lead to related thoughts in the Figures section of the Notes:
oh hell
There are still the bad dreams I have to say
a dram in the thought of a bad bad night
a bad potion potent with impotence
& pain that dream in which you say I
am ruined with you I am no more &
the taxi leaves me standing in the street
& the streetlamp goes out there is this sort
of dream that leaves me without a heart or
more like with a hole in my selfheart
heartself that hellhole of a dream
o hole o hell the inside of my mind
damning me with bad portents & potions
you said to come I came & you killed me
this kind of killing that kills me again
the leopard girl lands & she takes a turn
in the leafy woods she leaps & she lands
she is a leaper as I also am
look at her redbreasts as she takes the turn
those are my breasts I say to my mother
or as though to my mother who is dead
shiny red satin she wears on her breasts
under the spotted cape that flings out wide
who is the redhaired redbreasted leaper
all burning up in her greengirl joy
a leaper of a girl that’s what she is
coy bravura the joy of her breasts
look how she glitters in her coyjoy
how brave she is in her red satin breasts
three boys
I forgot the three boys for many years
who took me into the woods with them
or I went along with them wanting them
& they barely touched me in my terror
playing at touching as though it were done
& nothing was touched & nothing done
but I did not know that nothing was done
& I did not know for most of my life
even that I went to the woods with them
or that they had done nothing to me
& when I remembered I saw the leaves
that were brown & knew it wasn’t spring
& saw the light that was not spring light
& my jacket that was dirtied by leaves
then I remember that I once cut off
the tail of a squirrel I hauled from the woods
thinking of something that was kittensoft
I laid it on my mother’s cutting board
it was big dank dead & fur gray stiff
why did she let me cut the tail on her
cutting board I didn’t like it it was
hard inside & the fur was rough I had
to bear down & grind I didn’t like it
but had begun & so went on I saw
the fur teacup in the glass case when I
sipped I gagged this was not surrealism
it was super real it made me hot & bored
squirrelism it made me squirrel inside
snow
I’m lying in a drift on the white road
white dark roadside in the snowingwhite snow
wearing a light slip or my nakedness
& the snow drifts are drifting against me
in the blurring snow the whirr of some wheels
& a pair of snowslow lights are turning
I must roll over roll away & hide
my hips won’t roll as I will them to roll
if they see me for sure they will hurt me
white snowslurred lights sweepstrafe my nakedness
hurt me or leave me naked in the cold
strafe my heels hips shoulders straggled hair
I’d rather be hurt than left in the cold
lovely I am turning in the snowcold
the three glass vases standing in the hall
in a last ray of summer evening light
each of the vases holding three roses
drowning underwater the three roses
yellowrose pinkrose & also bluerose
down in the water their fullpetal heads
that flow a little like little girls’ hair
in the dark hall in a last ray of light
we were three little girls is that the three
I was born third on the third of a month
on the wallpaper were three old roses
over & over the same old roses
the dreamdrowning flowinghair roses
& in the dream a ray of evening light
red buick
there’s an old red buick on a mountain
& a red phone in life the redphone was
in the hall & the realgirl robin phoned
& said we heard you did something that
begins with f & ends with u—c—k
& it’s not firetruck I spelled it out
& thought is that what I did or did not
or else maybe almost firetruck uckfuck
& I heard her laugh & another girl
laughed years later I saw her & she said
we were all doin’ it you were too young
my softsillyself taking the redphone
hearing the firetruck & burning red
alone redface on the mountain alone
knife
my mother comes at me waving a knife
there’s a long mirror on the closet door
I’m looking in the terror mirror &
I’m thinking her knife is a rhyme for life
but this is a murderous reflection
nowhere to hide from my life or hers
nowhere to hide but in the long mirror
in the mirror where nothing is hidden
except all that is lying behind us
I don’t see us I see where we once were
with our long love mirrored & closeted
& now here she is waving the lifeknife
as close as I can come to disclosure
she isn’t dead there is no closing yet
south
in my dream notes there was a missing word
that belonged to a place called valley road
I wrote every thought that came to my mind
behind the lost word fell the missing clue
on south valley road was the stonewell house
& the clue to the terrible bloodthought
the thought that had been cutting up my life
& stone was what I used to hide the thought
& well was the place where it was hidden
sometime after the stabbing happened
we had often gone down the valley road
& the thought was I was the sarah slashed
& valley was the place my life would go
& going down was also going south
I tell olivia I would rather die
than let them throw my suitcase overboard
while the boat rocks & the spray splashes up
everyone’s suitcase must go overboard
but my case is more dire more desperate
because I have nothing left in the world
only my suitcase & the drenching deck
she says she will help me I weep & wail
if I lose my suitcase I’ll go overboard
her last name is havilland which means
have a land meaning will you have some land
& land is what I need to do & have
I’m far out to sea on the lurching deck
I need a remedy to suit the case
end
there isn’t an end this is what I know
there is no end & no bottom to it
this makes me think of the bottom of me
that is bottomlessly infinite in me
in my moods that go swinging through myself
selfmood mindself always overwhelmed
by what happened or else didn’t happen
what didn’t happen was that I was loved
I was bottomless in my falling down
through the bottomlessness of the unloved
the end of life I think is to be loved
or to love someone else who must be loved
that is bottomland to the bottomlife
a place to lie down & a place to kiss
Excerpted from night thoughts, copyright (c) 2013 by Sarah Arvio, by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
