American Dream

The American dream is a collective dream
of falling through the navy blue stars
and the branches of the elms, long dead
and eaten. Every night, I lay my big
American head on my memory
pillow. I am a late fall bloomer:

an aster, last in my pot of blooms,
the nightshades, cosmos. They may dream
of my cats, Dante and Cosmo. Their memory
hurts: my poet boy, my cluster of stars.
This country is too vast, too American: big
teeth, smiles, big steaks, big cars, big dead

classrooms, churches, nightclubs. I’m dead
wrong to claim that you, friends, bloom
sad as I. But America has always been big,
my country, the only one I know. I dreamt,
I woke, groped for my zodiac book, my star
guide with the blue cover. I remembered

my dream of lactating ink, my mammary
glands old, the sacs sturgid and flat, dead,
needing release. What does this mean? The stars
told a different story: a bruise may bloom
on your American ego. Don’t covet or jinx. My dreams
are American. They decided to sail across that big

blue ocean to visit my ancestors. I begged
dead relatives I’ll never know to remember
their long nights, their national dreams
of pregnancy, snakes, teeth that loosen and die
from bad un-American insurance. A bloom
of venom, of disease. The teeth fall like stars.

Lately, my dreams are wet and star
hungry Americans, all their bellies swollen big
with gunmetal pride. Our babies bloom
American milk teeth. But I barely remember
this when I wake. The nights seem deadened,
timeless, the propofol dream

from a doctor’s needle. Time falls dead like a star,
blooms dreamless twilight. I can’t
remember anywhere as big as America.

—Jennifer Martelli (Under a Warm Green Linden)

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