Deliberate Insomnias
M.P. Powers
Empty Night Monologue
It’s not even that warm in here
but I am roasting
I can’t sleep I can’t keep
my limbs in one place
I tear the sheets off me
my pores
have eyes
my mind is broken
etruscan pottery
something has climbed
into me some demon
some long
dead cockroach
ancestor a minister
a murderer
my great-great-grandfather
gus wheeler
maybe it’s him maybe
it’s that woodcutter he killed
or a family curse
I am beginning to see
oblivion as though it were
a palpable
thing like toenail clippers
or a papaya tree
or a robotic vacuum
cleaner
hey maybe
I won’t sleep
at all tonight
I can’t turn off my mind
I am melting I tell you
maybe I will cry
I might even dance
or fill the room with raw
unearthly
screams
I would
but my wife she’s sleeping
I can hear
the air whistling through her
nostrils
I want to tell her
how I am suffering I want to
tell her about love
about gus wheeler
about my brain not shutting off
but I better
not she is dreaming
I think I’ll just lie here roasting
in this
wretched
humanity
my toes wiggling.
Dispatch from a Friend’s Sofa
Nothing. Not the Sangria or Four Roses, not the mass of Peruvian cotton, not the funeral air nor sea of crickets devouring me. Nothing could bring me under that night until the moon - which could just as easily have been a cross or Picasso’s face – rolled down a roof and hung on a branch outside the window, filling my skull with dreams.
The Visitors
I get out of bed, wander down the hall and into the bathroom. There’s moonlight pouring through the window, a pool of pearl-gray floating on the tile. I stand in it, pee, flush. Then I see it: my enormous shadow covering half the wall and reaching up to the ceiling. I step away from it, go to the sink and turn the tap on. The water is pearl-gray like the moonlight. It gathers in my hands. I put my lips to it, see my mother’s reflection in it. I turn off the tap, catch a glimpse of my Uncle Jack in the mirror. I wander back down the hallway. There are footsteps following me. Someone climbs into bed with me. Someone’s lying next with me. It’s my grandmother in a green skirt and a white blouse. I listen to her breathing. I hear my grandfather on the other side of her. I see my other grandparents in the corner near the curtains. They’re all with me. My entire deceased family from 1970s Aurora, Illinois. I live my nights in their company.
Pandora
My dad didn’t tell me he put my mom in the closet of the guest bedroom. I discovered her in there one day when I was staying over. She was sitting on the shelf in a small, cardboard box. She was nestled among the Christmas decorations. My dad put her up there, he said, because he didn’t know what else to do with her. He said he couldn’t bear to open the box. He didn't want to see his wife of 55 years ground up in some stupid urn. So he left her on the shelf in that sealed box and then I discovered her and I left her there too, untouched. I tried to forget she was up there only ten feet from where I was sleeping. But sometimes, I could almost hear that old familiar voice in that beautiful Midwestern accent: “It’s been so long since we spoke, Mike. I hope you know how much I love and miss you.” Other times I would think about how just a few years ago, she would be in and out of that room all the time, vacuuming the carpet, dusting the tops of the picture frames, going into the closet to hang a shirt, or take down the ornaments, never realizing that one day very soon she too would be on the shelf with the ornaments all her girlhood dreams, her fears, traumas, loves, everything she’d ever done or hoped for or been contained in a space the size of your fist. Jezus, mom, you really did it this time.
The Transient
The empty ocean, the buried moon, your hand in my hair. Love’s early light breaking through the window. I know all this has less substance than air, but so does every Bachian concerto and the three blue Chinese mountains. All is shadow and shadow feeding on light, the Tree of Life, the leaves of each generation flourishing for their brief seasons and letting go, replaced in Spring. Listen to the speech of the birds. Watch the way the moon joins its horns and night comes down. It’s the same tale told time and again, in parables and metaphor, ritual magic. All is shadow and shadow feeding on light, the light disguised as rain, as love. This moment that’s somehow enough.
M.P. Powers lives with one foot in Berlin and one in South Florida. Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Wrongdoing Magazine, Glitchwords, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Twitter and Instagram @mppowers1132
Black Stone / White Stone 