Alexandra van de Kamp

Sleep: A Report

Oh, elusive lullaby of the body,
porthole into the brain’s watery depths,

last night you had me fretting
over deadlines again—

deadlines, what a term
to carry with us as we wade

through our days without the soft
clutch of our beds,

a bullseye of panic
pinned to our to-do lists,

a grim nod to our buttercup-
dusted mortality.

Other nights, empty rooms
buoy up inside of me,

and I find myself organizing
a literary event, where each guest

must present a hardboiled egg to enter.
Who the featured speaker is,

is never mentioned. My dreams
decidedly weak on backstory

and event planning. Despite
the muddy fields that I half-remember

upon waking, and the snow
in a country I’ve not seen

for years, despite  the dead
talking to me with teacups

in their hands, sleep,
you are a crawl space

my body finds each night,
and, together, we dig and dig

past gravity and the need for doors
to have hinges, into what the body carries

with or without our permission.

Alexandra van de Kamp is the Executive Director for Gemini Ink, San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center. Her most recent books of poems are Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press 2016) and The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (CW Books 2010). Her third book of poems, Ricochet Script, is forthcoming from Next Page Press in 2022.  She has published several chapbooks, including A Liquid Bird Inside the Night (Red Glass Books 2015) and Dear Jean Seberg (2011), which won the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have been published in journals nationwide, such as The Cincinnati Review, Connecticut Review, The Texas Observer, Denver Quarterly, Washington Square, Tahoma Literary Review, and more. She has work forthcoming in Cider Press Review. More poems can be found online at 32poems, Versedaily and The Boiler.
Her favorite sweet is, no contest, brownies, especially ones that are heated up and packed with chocolate chips!