by Rachyl Nyoka
At the Oracle of Dream Incubation
If we allow the Mad Dogs of Hell to poison us by Biting us, we shall imagine that we see nothing but such Things about us, and like such Things fly upon all that we see. –Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World
I.
Where you are (where are you?) you can’t know
where the edges are
you say, without the demarcation of a fence
(the streets all flooded yellow mazes, mudpaths hanging over cliffs)
until you start to feel the wet
dirt-crumble of a drop. We’re here all the time together, you say—
your cell won’t work and you can’t call for help—
We’re often here in dreams but
(why can’t you call for help, you’re calling me) like a placebo
it can’t stay real until you figure out
how to stop believing that it’s not.
II.
Cellphone static like windcrack through cornstalks—
you’re holding out the phone and telling me
to listen to the slurp
of your footsteps through the total dark and down.
III.
So THAT’S what you’re holding onto,
a faceless dream-voice, diagnostic, smug,
reveals to me, your
forensic Macedonia?
OK. I guess I’m holding on to my “forensic Macedonia.”
Wanting you at 21
like Alexander the Great of Macedonia
to sword-
slash through your every Gordian knotclump.
I’m sequencing forensically the DNA
of self-conquest, yours
and mine (Thebes in flames, Byblos
and all its papyruses in ash)
and you’re hiking barefoot through fields of yellow maize
crunching bark scorpions everywhere you go.
They’re not really that poisonous, are they? I’ll be OK
anyway, won’t
I?
I wake to the yellow crush of exoskeletons,
neurotoxic venom slathered deep between my toes.
IV.
It doesn’t matter—you tell Dream-Me to make certain
to remind Me when I wake—
I’m crashing over backyard fences
through mudlawn cornstalk mazes
searching again for any sign of you, at 4 a.m.—
It doesn’t matter how loud you make
the dogs bark, it only
matters you get over all the right fences
till you find me
out.
V.
At every forward step another sign of enemies:
at Persepolis 800 Greeks
with limbs hacked off
extending their wool-wrapped olive branches of supplication
and surrender, Persian letters scored into their skin.
Alexander walled behind his gates
all the monsters he had colonized:
headless Blemmyae, eyes instead
of areolas, Scythian’s
lionwinged and four-pawed eagles
brooding their gold-studded clutch of eggs.
Omnia horribilia
plus quam credi potest:
everything horrible beyond belief
my Macedonian boy-conquerer closed off.
Whatever cynocephali with frothing houndmouths
come after you, out
of you I’ll herd away: I’m holding
out my branches of supplication, holding
on to all my Macedonian
forensic dreams (what is
the crime?) of walling off the wails
of subjugated and so
dependent abominations.
VI.
. . . maze’s gold-leaf flagstones
leading
nowhere, which means
where you and I find ourselves
lost together. Which means
toward the palace of Alexander the Great,
in that tiny again and landlocked mass hedonia.
VII.
When the Gates of Alexander
crumble, no black granite prison cells
to delineate where those pent-up monsters cannot be
where do the Omnia horribilia go?
It doesn’t matter how enraged we make
the ancient dogheaded chimeras. It only matters we get over
any pulverized wall that still holds us back
to back.
VIII.
See, in my sleep-
visitation temple, on my bed of skins
and venomless yellow snakes, where
Asclepius diagnoses and repairs, the serpent-
maned and lion-clawed, black-fur-
gnawed three-headed dog of my heal-
all incubation dream
snarling now at your fence-clambering feet.
Don’t worry, Dad, you don’t have to strangle
those three, the Dream-You comes
to the oracle to tell Me: They’ll snap at my heels
only as long as you
don’t believe they won’t.
Bruce Beasley is the author of nine collections of poems, most recently Prayershreds (Orison Books, 2023) and All Soul Parts Returned and Theophobia, both from BOA Editions. He recently moved to Asheville. He will be teaching an online five-week class on poetry and dreams as a benefit for Orison Books in January and February:
Rachyl Nyoka (she/her) is a biracial Black poet, visual artist, and psychotherapist from San Diego, California. Rachyl uses expressive arts and the creative process both within her therapeutic work and as an exploration of the subconscious, liminality/voidspace, and archetypal symbolism. Her visual work has appeared in The Hopper Magazine. Rachyl currently lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, son, and three cheeky felines. She can be found at www.rachylnyoka.art and @stingraee on Cara as well as www.clovepsychotherapy.com.