Dreams & Nightmares #76

Issue #76 of Dreams & Nightmares contains twelve poems, which rage in size from a three-line haiku to a four-page poetically told myth.

The issue opens with “Till Stars Turn Strange,” a piece of Norse verse by Tom Galusha. Old Norse poetic forms rely as much on very strict alliteration as on meter or rhyme, and all of the Norse forms can be very tricky to write, so I find myself admiring the skill required for the creation of Galusha’s poem. “Till Stars Turn Strange” tells of a benevolent spirit who is forced to leave a violence-touched home, although I must admit that I’m not sure I’d have realized that fact if not for the note about such spirits printed just above the poem itself. Still, the poem itself is full of lovely, haunting images:

On bergs where white bears
the blood of fat seals
crouch lapping like liquor:
look for me there.

With lines like those, I don’t mind rereading the piece a few times in order to follow the story.

“Bigfoot in the Barbershop” by Jamie Rosen seems, at first, as though it should be a far lighter poem than Galusha’s:

He sits in the big chair,
              nervous,
as it raises up higher,
higher,
I m p o s s b l y h i g h
with every foot-pedal-pump

The set-up hints at humor, and, in fact, there is a touch of that in the way the poem progresses, but it’s a slightly bitter humor, as sharply revealing as the barber’s razor. The ending is perfect, and the poem as a whole left me as close to tears as to laughter.

Duane Ackerson’s poem, “The Ghost’s Child,” is more conventionally dark, although its opening is so matter-of-fact as to make the growing spookiness that comes after seem spookier still. “The Ghost’s Child” tells of the offspring of a ghost and a human, and the effect that child has upon its still living father:

When he lifted it,
the skin on his arms went cold,
then numb,
but a spark of something
caught at his heart.

It’s a very effective poem and more than a bit chilling.

Equally dark, but masked in a deceptively light and bubbly narrative viewpoint, is “To All My Clones” by Shelly Lesher. This poem is an ironically cheery and charming message from an aging owner to the clones being grown in preparation for “that operation….”:

I just want to say that I hope you clones
arent fighting about who the “chosen one” is going to be,
because you might be surprised at who I’m going to pick

“To All My Clones” is both creepy and amusing, in part because of the strength of the voice used.

Overall, this entire issue of Dreams & Nightmares engages the emotions very nicely, often more than one at a time in the course of a single poem. I suggest that readers pick up a copy to see if the poems affect them in the same way.