In the House of Night

In the house of night, a blue bear pores over the screenplay for your dreams. Somebody’s bad heart wrinkles like a sack of cheese tied to the rafters. I dreamed that I was lucid-dreaming, and then I was.

In the house of night, neither ink nor midnight oil ever run low. Bed-time prayers flutter out through a cross-shaped window, anachronistic as bats on a winter day. The mild poison from a house spider bite spreads a dark delta down one thigh.

In the house of night, every time a clock stops, some unloved language or species dies in its sleep. A nightjar blows its lid & the bogeyman jumps, an obvious fraud, under the parchment eaves.