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Sonnets to Ambien
- Louisiana State University Press
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65 Sonnets to Ambien Ambien, a sedative-hypnotic drug used by insomniacs, may cause hallucinations and erratic behavior. 1 A reaper and his phosphorescent lynx hang from my coat hook. I’m already this far from sleep. Whole species away. The pillow swims. Isn’t this hot flutter in each nostril the fur of my nocturnal angel as she bristles by, and changes the time zone? The time zone here always resets to jet lag. As if I fly in each second from Paris, anew, with my perfumed silks, my scrawled-on maps. I’ve tried valerian, chamomile, lavender, hops. I’ve eaten passionflower. Outside my window the honeysuckle’s smothering the summer locusts. Their cogs and wings grind. 66 2 The snack at three a.m.: buttered cigarettes in a Chinese noodle bowl. A frieze of blue mountains along its lip. Sleep’s porcelain borders. Next: a salt sandwich, a slice of raw bacon. Tell me, bright lynx, what your grazing pastures grow. I know the cucumber blooming over brick must hold the harshest yellows of mid-day, the wide-awake world. At your central black pond: a circle of faces from which whispers rise like scavenger birds. Rasp of grackles as they love the whites of my eyes like two rhinestone brooches. They pry them loose, take off through the screw-pod mesquite. [3.145.8.42] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 18:07 GMT) 67 3 In the country of No Sleep, Not a Doze, everyone’s a distant cousin: the coat hook’s Swedish nose, the lamp’s cloisonné orchids lit between its neck and mine. Even the electric lynx looks ancestral. Angel, let me tell you a story: the woman goes out, hypnotized, into the Denver night. She wears nothing but a white nightshirt, though it’s twenty degrees. After the car wreck, the cops find her in the middle of the intersection pissing the shape of the Land of Insomnia, which steams as it spreads, which freezes, fixed to the crosswalk’s bars. This country’s the largest island, with one inhabitant, with one light always left on. ...