In my dream the champagne pulses before my eyes and someone enters the hallway to tell me I need to get Sur because of an emergency around the corner.

In my dream the density of my argument plays out against water.

In my dream the whole world wavers, then becomes a back yard.

In my dream a woman is bragging about her spouse outside of the tiny stationary shop on Amsterdam Avenue: “Oh she can give you the full constituents of a bridge.”

In my dream: a plan with white pages.

In my dream I inspect the glass dogs as they are unpacked in the back room.

In my dream people stampede through the aisles of the department store, shoving past glass partitions and racks of clothes. Cornered, my only choice is to throw the dog I’ve been riding into the jaws of the oncoming lion in hopes that it will distract him.

In my dream I create two things: a concrete building of stacked two-person conference rooms with tables and rugs, and a salad with peaches slices into strips and latticed together. People are inspecting both of them on the campus’s beach.

In my dream I struggle out of bed and walk into the warehouse. The play is happening and walls are painted a mottled gray, covered in splotched fabric, winding and endless. I am backstage and lost, I find someone who might be a stage manager and ask to be brought to the “front of house”. She leads me through more set, more rehearsal, more debris. There is glass on the floor. She grins and disappears.

In my dream it’s orderly until I get past the first archway.

In my dream the frame slips, the images repeat and I get up while a song I’ve forgotten plays in my head.

In my dream I’m back in the apartment I’ve always coveted and the walls have been resurfaced. I search for an additional room that I might make into a studio. Like usual, rooms fork in all directions and the layout is bewildering.

In my dream I’m looking at a rack of papers. I hold a handle. We have been building for days. 

In my dream we move along the stage. It’s about to happen.

In my dream the scene can be viewed through the gridded tail of a blaze orange monkey.

In my dream the stationary I flip through is soft and beige. I am already late for the class I am the guest speaker at and there are too many elevators behind the marble reception areas.

In my dream there are boxes and laughs.

In my dream the technician presses the defibrillator paddles into my father’s chest. Seconds after I hear the word “clear” I am pacing the length of the darkened room. The excess current has knocked me out for hours and now The Cramps are setting up to play a show in the tattered stage  that fills the back wall.

In my dream I pack my few things so that I can move out of the apartment I’ve been staying in. It’s because two of my exes are in love and are moving in together. They’ve cleaned the place well.