I’m teaching an unwilling teenage girl how to search courthouse property records when I see Aunt Jo she’s lost weight and regained her sanity in the afterlife and hugs me with sunshine rarely felt in the world of clouds I remember this is the second time I’ve seen her in a single dream with multiple vortexes like tornadoes spinning off from a hurricane but duty calls and the Clerk grudgingly explains the new records index is organized by pictures rather than words I chase off after the teenaged girl who’d rather be playing with her phone but part of me is still with Aunt Jo like a tornado spinning off from a hurricane
Tornadoes
Mike Wilson
3 Questions for Mike
What was your process for creating this work?
These poems apply a journalistic style to dream poems. The poems are literally reportage of dreams as experienced. I add no "symbolic" details to the poems – it's strictly journalism reported in the form of a poem.
What is the significance of the form/genre you chose for this work?
I've learned the trick to remembering my dreams and developed the ability not only to recall them but to enter back into them during the awake state and describe the dreams as they occurred. In other words, I can replay them. I find poetry usually works better than prose to describe the dream experience.
What is the significance of this work to you?
I believe dreams have internal coherence that is valid on its own terms. Trusting the coherence of the dream rather than running it through the intellect like Freud can create art that may tell us something about the creative process. When it works for readers, that's a validating experience for me.
Mike Wilson is author of Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world. He’s a past winner of Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Chaffin/Kash Prize. His work has appeared in many small magazines, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Mud Season Review, The London Reader, and The Ocotillo Review. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky.