In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

MELISSA CANNON The Sleeping Beauty Pain threaded my hand like light through a needle and I rose up only to double over, frozen, my shape a shadow cast by a dream. * This is not a bad dream, just strange, as a third hand unfolding the hidden shape of things, the light twined by double moons, the scent of black rose. * I smell again the dough that rose in my mother’s kitchen. She would dream of how the sweet mass would double, squeezing those clouds by hand until they were firm and light, ready to mold into the perfect shape. * Here is the land that spread to shape our lives’ first imagery: where hills rose, a blue circle in the misty light, where we tongued open each dream like a bud, where, braided, hand in hand, we laughed into the river, our faces double. * Tossed and tossing on our double bed, forms uncoupled or took shape and whose mouth, whose breast, whose hand? Then I felt the swollen rose of her body open. It was no dream but a coming from deep waters to the light. * Every morning in the gathering light, the woman he touches is my double. I live elsewhere in a dream, trying to remember how I could shape myself. He believes that, with his kiss, I rose from death, saved when he took my hand. * Where had I seen the moon light up such a shape? Why must I double back, furtive, to kiss the velvet rose? What is the meaning of this dream, this tingling in my hand? LOVE AND SEX ...

Share