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Dreamtime

"DREAMTIME"
copyright 2006 by TOM ROMERO

Second-Hand Shelley

A poem by Laura McCullough

1.

I dreamed Nietzsche
called to say he'd dreamt
of me naked. Me, not him,
and what was he doing
dreaming of me, imagining
me into existence like the best song,
the one that makes your throat tight
every damned time you hear it
though you know better.
You reason it's trash, sentimentality,
but you ache for it anyway. Nietzsche
knew it, this side of ourselves,
and Shelley knew it better: make me
feel, make me feel is a cry
to make me know; I am naked,
and I am ashamed,
but, please god, let me
be brave enough to know this,
too, about you, and forgive you,
and accept yours of me.

2.

In my dreams,
I am never naked,
always wearing second-hand clothes
bought not out of economy,
but the hope these clothes,
already worn into the shapes
of other bodies will, in the wearing,
change these hips to straight,
flatten this scarred belly,
smooth the thighs I know you
wish me to clench around you,
so you, too, will feel, and know
that you were dreamed of, too.

A previous version was published in Potion.

Copyright 2006 by Laura McCullough

Laura McCullough Laura writes:
I'd recently written a paper called "In Defence of Shelley: the New Science of Mirror Neurons and its Implications for a Theory of Poetics," and was exploring the metaphoric resonances of the words "mirror" and "neuron." "Mirror" having to do with self, vanity, memory, aging, beauty, and "Neuron" having to do with intellect, good versus evil, ideas, and aesthetics.

Laura McCullough graduated with a BA from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, and holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Goddard College. She has been a New Jersey State Arts Council Fellow, won a Geraldine R. Dodge Scholarship to attend the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and was the 2005 Prairie Schooner Merit Scholar in Poetry at the Nebraska Summer Writers Workshop. She attended the 2005 Bread Loaf writers conference as a contributor. Laura has published poems widely in literary magazines and journals such as Nimrod, Potion, Hotel Amerika, Gulf Coast, Nightsun, Iron Horse Quarterly, Boulevard, The God Particle, Poetry East, Confluence, Exquisite Corpse, Word Riot, Tarpaulin Sky, and others. Her first collection of poems, The Dancing Bear, was published in February, 2006 by Open Book Press with jacket blurbs by Stephen Dunn, Li-young Lee, and BJ Ward. She delivered a paper, “In Defence of Shelley: the New Science of Mirror Neurons and its Implications for a Theory of Poetics” at The Mid American’s 2005 Winter Wheat Writing Festival in Bowling Green. She is a professor of writing at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey, where she chairs the Visiting Writers Series. Laura can be reached via email at: lmccullough@brookdalecc.edu.

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