by Eric Pankey

a pillar of fire is a foretaste

In the dream, I complain how “dream” is often excluded from general lists of time-based media. But no one listens, and by “no one” I mean the passers-by in the rain-dimmed light. I am looking for a dry place where I might shelter and add this dream to the dream journal I keep thinking would be useful to keep—as a source for poems, say, or to figure out what is nagging at me, or merely as a way to say I write daily, when, if truth be told, I do not. I have not written anything since I bought the pocketsize black notebook with a black elastic strap to hold it closed. In the dream, I am certain that the notebook itself is the cause, the reason why I cannot seem to put pencil to paper, cannot rub two words together and make the slightest of sparks. I find a seat by the door in a coffee shop I did not know existed. At every table a person is writing in a pocketsize black notebook with a black elastic strap When I open my notebook, I find a single line in my own hand I do not remember having written: A pillar of fire is a foretaste. 

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Eric Pankey is the author of many books. Three new ones are out this fall, Owl of Minerva (Milkweed Editions), Vestiges: Notes, Responses & Essays 1988-2018 (Parlor Press), and Alias: Prose Poems (Free Verse Editions).