Slim, in my dreams, you carpenter dark rooms,
skirt the fête you’ll no longer host, the burden
of a thirsty holiday, every theatre company in this city
fit within your brownstone, every dead friend, every woodpile
I knew in Chicago, always thought you’d like to meet.
These are parties bent on calculated loss. Nobody
traces your state between canapés. Too many armoires,
too many broken chests, that’s how I know I’m in dreams,
that you will speak in old cedar, vice, and skeleton key,
unleash what’s locked. Some bandsaw or barmaid
orchestrates ice luge shots, someone teaches Tacky the first
nineteen embraces of joinery, and you are in the garage,
facing, opening and closing the door to the vodka,
playing your Taylor like three logs on a fire, till I walk by,
untie your cabinets, tell all the dead moths to fly away.
C. Henry Smith makes poems in Oregon. His work has appeared in Jabberwock Review, DMQ Review, River River, Peach Velvet Mag, Dillydoun Review, and others. He has enjoyed residencies through Spring Creek Project and Chicago Art Department and is currently pursuing an MFA at Oregon State University. @chenrysmith