Cousin Drowses on the Flight to Kuwait

Do you dream of Saturn of molars
of the jeweled corridors of palaces dream
the commander’s robes
his crooked smile dream
sooty bellows of cumulous
dream dress dream a lover’s breath dream
wind over dunes the voices
riding night winds dream whispered
light of stars dream teddy bear dream mother
father dream baby
sister dream mirages
dream your body riding the air
dream the body’s tenuous earthen cleave dream
birthmark or crooked toe
dream every hair on your head dream
galaxies aswirl at each finger’s tip
the trigger’s smooth tick
dream brown faces your
brown face dream the commander
cockeyed the tumble of diamonds stumbling
from his toothless mouth
his florid robes flailing above a fat body
dream the dragon’s toothpick
fibula femur dream orchard abloom
in bloody soil dream
the improbability of your legs
ambulatory pleasures
sand frosty towpath gravel
road dream breezes combing
clover growth threading a graveyard’s grass
dream the random calculus of shrapnel
or your skin wrapping the chorale of muscle
and bone the galactic swell
of blood cells heaving
breathe dream
breathe

Ross Gay

Cousin Drowses on the Flight to Kuwait