Are You Awake? by Steve Klepetar

Are You Awake?

by Steve Klepetar

Are you awake or climbing
the rope ladder of some dream?
Dark music plays here, old
as trickling water carving
limestone into empty caves.
It’s where you lay your head,
where soft, brown hands may
wander through your gray
and thinning hair, where blood
rises past shame, breathing spikes
and air turns green as vision
penetrates this new light.
Someone whispers a name
that might have been yours.
Is it part of the song or a snaky
string of words sliding along
your neck?
Either way your skin prickles
through fog and sleepy haze
and your parched tongue burns.

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Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013), My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press, 2013), and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (forthcoming from Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014).