By Gillian Nevers
It’s like this in dreams:
The way you hover over the world
watching the land beneath you heave, then split
and shatter into dark crevasses.
You could disappear in a tectonic upheaval. Sometimes
your screams scare the dog and wake your husband.
Sometimes your husband holds you until
you realize that it was all a dream.
Somewhere, always somewhere, there’s catastrophe.
The earth shifts and buildings and bridges and roads crumble.
We watch on screens.
It seems like a dream.
Thousands of miles away the ocean draws back.
A Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, Gillian Nevers’ poems have appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies. Her chapbook, The True Story, (Fullers Windy Acres Farm Press) won second prize in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ 2019 Chapbook contest. She was second prize winner in the 2008 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters statewide poetry contest and received an Honorable Mention in the Academy’s 2019 contest. Gillian lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Portage Magazine 