The day your mother spoke you into existence
(or at least a stick to pee on), I dreamed about Fargo,
not the city—who’s even been there?—but the movie.
Your footprints cracked the earth’s white shell,
and I heard the sweep of epic chords
in the Nilfheim’s terrible and crushing wind.
I watched that postage stamp of a small bird
fighting the Jotun frost with beak and talon:
I thought—that’s you from here on out—
that’s what we made (a feathery secret)
the night we didn’t watch Fargo, when
we did not suffer death by wood chipper,
but melted as if licked from blue ice
by a giant blue cow—Babe,
we made spaghetti that night and
drank too much wine. We tossed wet
noodles against the ceiling, hoping
they might stick:
That was the first flutter of winged flight—
when we dreamed beyond the briny brim
of boiling water and were lit on fire
by the world to come.
Bryan Harvey's writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Bull, Nurture, Hobart and HAD, No Contact Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. He tweets about basketball, books, and teaching @Bryan_S_Harvey. Any current typos are the result of postseason baseball.