Toi Derricotte: Invisible Dreams

La poesie vit d’insomnie perpetuelle
—René Char
.
There’s a sickness in me. During
the night I wake up & it’s brought

a stain into my mouth, as if
an ocean has risen & left back

a stink on the rocks of my teeth.
I stink. My mouth is ugly, human

stink. A color like rust
is in me. I can’t get rid of it.

It rises after I
brush my teeth, a taste

like iron. In the
night, left like a dream,

a caustic light
washing over the insides of me.

*

What to do with my arms? They
coil out of my body

like snakes.
They branch & spit.

I want to shake myself
until they fall like withered

roots; until
they bend the right way—

until I fit in them,
or they in me.

I have to lay them down as
carefully as an old wedding dress,

I have to fold them
like the arms of someone dead.

The house is quiet; all
night I struggle. All

because of my arms,
which have no peace!

*

I’m a martyr, a girl who’s been dead
two thousand years. I turn

on my left side, like one comfortable
after a long, hard death.

The angels look down
tenderly. “She’s sleeping,” they say

& pass me by. But
all night, I am passing

in & out of my body
on my naked feet.

*

I’m awake when I’m sleeping & I’m
sleeping when I’m awake, & no one

knows, not even me, for my eyes
are closed to myself.

I think I am thinking I see
a man beside me, & he thinks

in his sleep that I’m awake
writing. I hear a pen scratch

a paper. There is some idea
I think is clever: I want to

capture myself in a book.

*

I have to make a
place for my body in

my body. I’m like a
dog pawing a blanket

on the floor. I have to
turn & twist myself

like a rag until I
can smell myself in myself.

I’m sweating; the water is
pouring out of me

like silver. I put my head
in the crook of my arm

like a brilliant moon.

*

The bones of my left foot
are too heavy on the bones

of my right. They
lie still for a little while,

sleeping, but soon they
bruise each other like

angry twins. Then
the bones of my right foot

command the bones of my left
to climb down.

From Tender. Copyright © 1997 by Toi Derricotte. (Pitt, 1997). Included in Vox Populi by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Toi Derricotte is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, I: New & Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019). Derricotte is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ 2021 Wallace Stevens Award, given to recognize outstanding artistic achievement in the art of poetry over a poet’s career. The Poetry Society of America awarded her the 2020 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry, citing, “There are few poets who are as brave as Toi Derricotte; brave in her subject matter and brave in how she insists that even the deepest hurts must sing on the page.”