In my dream I let go
for Larry, for Driftwood
boxed in/crushed
ground powder
all that’s left
in the bottom of the bag for
sleeping/remembering
a dream/dread & drowning
in the black
coal dust/empty
grain husk, siloed/alone
having fallen
asleep, letting go
the running board
running out
of food
or water—
something to drink (how many hops
in a straight line
under the influence
until you fall?) slipping
or mistaking the speed
plunging break-neck
into snow deep six feet
(in, in it begins to seep)
stunned÷the blinding white light
stomped
beneath
the shoed hooves of the bull
unable to crawl
or getting out
& having to watch you fall
& not wake up.
You’re never too young
to face your dreams
to live your fears.
©2024 Roy Duffield All rights reserved.
Roy Duffield’s debut collection, Bacchus Against the Wall, was published by Anxiety Press in 2023. Roy helps edit Anti-Heroin Chic – “a journal that puts those on the outside inside” – and you’ll find more words of his in the likes of the Nashville Review, Into the Void, Seppuku, Unlikely Stories, Fevers of the Mind, Cephalopress’s Ink Sac, and Back Room Poetry’s Flights. He was chosen to perform at the 2019 Beat Poetry Festival in Barcelona, and has been shortlisted for the Book Edit Prize (2022), nominated for the Best of the Net (2023), a runner-up in the Still We Rise competition for revolutionary poems (2023), and won the Robert Allen Micropoem Contest (2021). Contact him on Twitter (@drinktraveller) or Instagram (@drinking_traveller).
Powerful ending.