Anxiety Dream: And/Or
. . . in which I’m in a cargo van
careering with its wind-
shield cracked and crazed,
fueled by volatile vapors
that some memory or yearning
has sparked into motion
toward a destination already
lost sight of or as yet unknown,
or back to a mythic place
where forebears still shoulder
the weighty luggage of foreign
tongues in shame or pride,
the heft of their words, like Putsch
and Shtetl or Tonton Macoute,
stuffed among yellowed linens,
which they discard, littering
every roadway traveled, or hang
to bleach on clotheslines
in towns that offer refuge
or disdain, and so they resign
themselves to the fires of their fury,
or again to prayer, and crowd inside
this van I’m in with all they own.
Oh America, where must we go?
Richard Foerster’s most recent book, With Little Light and Sometimes None at All (Littoral Books, 2023), was named a Finalist for this year’s Maine Literary Award for Poetry.
