Sierra Nelson

YOUR EYES ARE CLOSED BUT YOU AREN’T DREAMING

 

You are traveling slowly,
like a great shipwreck still sailing.
Almost tenderly, the sun puts a hand to your forehead.
Yes, you think, I’ve been unwell. You sink into the feeling.
But the sun is blind and must touch everything:
always feeling its gold way forward towards the dark.

 

 

This poem first appeared on a Seattle metro bus through the Poetry on Buses program, and is featured in I Take Back the Sponge Cake: A Lyrical Choose Your Own Adventure by Sierra Nelson and Loren Erdrich, Rose Metal Press 2012.

 

Seattle poet Sierra Nelson is co-founder of The Typing Explosion and Vis-à-Vis Society, president of Seattle’s Cephalopod Appreciation Society, a MacDowell fellow, and has poems in Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, Thermos, Fairy Tale Review, and Forklift Ohio, among others. Her lyrical choose-your-own-adventure book,  I Take Back the Sponge Cake, with visual artist Loren Erdrich, debuts from Rose Metal Press this month. Sierra will read from her new book at Open Books on Friday, April 20 at 7:30 pm, along with poet Zachary Schomburg.