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C.N.P Poetry 

Writer's pictureCathexis Northwest Press

Dream # 3: Peeping Tom; Dream #11: Spilled Milk

By: Connie Wasem Scott


Dream # 3:  Peeping Tom

The delivery boy arrives 

wearing a different

color than the one 

we expect. Terri

forgets how the song goes. 

So we go for a drive 

with the stereo turned up 

too loud. John 

makes a wrong turn. We're 

lost for months. 

Next thing is, we drop to our 

knees at our own

front door. The red paint

pales right before 

our eyes. I can’t 

reach the doorbell.

Inside, we hear the music

has died. Tomorrow 

appears as a stranger 

peeking through the drapes.





Dream #11: Spilled Milk


The fence post cracks in half from the top

to the base, so I step through it, make my way

past the compost bin where I believe

I hear the amber syrup ooze

into earth. The daylight ties

my smile to a cloud that’s smudged 

with sunlight and shadow. The barn 

blinks in the light where I peek

through a cracked door to see

big-eyed dairy cows spilling 

their milk into pails. And there’s 

my brother, crying as he tugs 

the pink teats. The breeze 

blows in, wipes his face. We hold 

our hands and head home.




 

Connie Wasem Scott lives in Spokane, WA, with her Aussie-American husband and teaches a range of writing and literature courses at Spokane Falls Community College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Minerva Rising, Eclectica, Sycamore Review, RHINO, Slipstream and other journals, and in anthologies, including All We Can Hold by Sage Hill Press and Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace: Writing by Women of the Great Plains by Backwaters Press.

"The poems I’ve been working on lately examine various manifestations of loss and its sister -- sorrow. I got an idea to take some quirky fragments from my notebooks and work them into poems that complement those themes. These dream poems allow me to explore how the subconscious might examine loss or the foreboding sense that an unnamed loss is heading our way, or of brother loss, as in these two poems. This dream series has also been fun for me because I can’t remember my dreams anymore, or at least complete dreams. Only bits and pieces linger, and I like playing with them into poems."




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