Dreams Inside the Glass Case

As I heal, leisure falls around me like a dawn-gray glove.

My nails grow long and indolent, clicking along the nightstand

when I reach for water, any water. I drift out on pills

forget-me-not blue, temper their chalk with candied jellies

feeling how I imagine the rich do: cared for without apology.

The bed is a tomb where I pray for the lazarus day to

come quickly, flat on my back under cotton shrouds, pain

the little dog nipping at my heels. A certain kind of woman

is allowed to rest so I don her mask. When I slip under

a technicolor parade of gems moving through the dark.

Palm Oasis

Because I fear the mountain

I climb it, braced and trembling.

In every direction the rock pushing

slant from earth, spiked land laden

with cholla, creosote, joshua trees

keeping watch for fire and rain alike.

My steps press the dust, among

the millions of visitors, of years.

Life retreats behind dead growth when

season is harsh. No shade, no succor

ranges grazing the sun like hard knuckles

until day’s leave when the dusklight slips

into the oasis how an unzipped dress

falls from the shoulders of a beauty,

quiet pierced by revved engines because

this is America; even in wilds, it sins.

What sweetness in its sour belly,

these lands kept separate, for now.

Shriveled pomegranates rattle in wind

bells of the underworld.

How did I luck into so much

here at the end of everything.

Ann DeVilbiss (she/her) has work published or forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Columbia Journal, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her little book of spell poems, The Red Chorus, is available from White Stag Publishing. A founding member of the Sublimity City Poetry Collective, she lives and works in Louisville.