Ambien, a sedative-hypnotic drug used by insomniacs,
may cause hallucinations and erratic behavior.
1
A reaper and his phosphorescent lynx
hang from my coat hook. I’m already
this far from sleep. Whole species away.
The pillow swims. Isn’t this hot flutter
in each nostril the fur of my nocturnal
angel as she bristles by, and changes
the time zone? The time zone here always
resets to jet lag. As if I fly in each second
from Paris, anew, with my perfumed silks,
my scrawled-on maps. I’ve tried valerian,
chamomile, lavender, hops. I’ve eaten
passionflower. Outside my window
the honeysuckle’s smothering the summer
locusts. Their cogs and wings grind.
2
The snack at three a.m.: buttered cigarettes
in a Chinese noodle bowl. A frieze
of blue mountains along its lip. Sleep’s
porcelain borders. Next: a salt sandwich,
a slice of raw bacon. Tell me, bright lynx,
what your grazing pastures grow. I know
the cucumber blooming over brick must hold
the harshest yellows of mid-day, the wide-awake
world. At your central black pond: a circle
of faces from which whispers rise like
scavenger birds. Rasp of grackles as they
love the whites of my eyes like two
rhinestone brooches. They pry them loose,
take off through the screw-pod mesquite.
3
In the country of No Sleep, Not a Doze,
everyone’s a distant cousin: the coat hook’s
Swedish nose, the lamp’s cloisonné orchids
lit between its neck and mine. Even the electric
lynx looks ancestral. Angel, let me tell you
a story: the woman goes out, hypnotized,
into the Denver night. She wears nothing
but a white nightshirt, though it’s twenty degrees.
After the car wreck, the cops find her
in the middle of the intersection pissing
the shape of the Land of Insomnia,
which steams as it spreads, which freezes, fixed
to the crosswalk’s bars. This country’s the largest
island, with one inhabitant, with one light always left on.