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American Fever Dream
by Isaac George Lauritsen

I dream of an open door
                  in a house that was dreamt for me
                                    ​and in the yard that came with the house
 
bounds the dog that came with the yard.
                  I was bred to be excited by someone else’s song.
                                    It comes as decoration from the burning trees.
 
Captain General Malaise pokes his dirty head
                  from a plot of busted florals, says onwards!
                                    so I venture out to buy a well-supported bed
 
as a god-sized thumb flips through a catalog
                  to make this autumn the amber I’m in.
 
                                    ⏕
 
There’s technology in walls
                  and wires handled by hands
                                    attached to limitless feelings.
 
I’m nostalgic for a time I wasn’t in
                  when windows protected homes from
                                    the paperpersons’ scrolls of news.
 
A headline stands in the phone light:
                  “CURRENT GENERATION: THE LONELIEST
                                    THIS SIDE OF LIBERTY!”
 
I could charge a newsstand and pummel it
                  with a neighborhood of broken ceiling fans
                                    then I remember the snail on the windowsill.
 
I named him Jackson, never uttered his name
                  and I named the windowsill Farewell. 
 
                                    ⏕
 
My wallet beeps with vestibule. I enter a train
                  as municipal data. Once, I was small enough to know
                                    nothing and now I’ve segmented the day.
 
People arrive in the future
                  hells of phone calls called morning.
                                    No one sees the present celebrate.
 
The chairs refurbish as trees. A man washes
                  all his chickens. A nose is smashed with a war
                                    of allergies called the air disguised as dandelions.
 
I tell myself: don’t go looking for why the trees
                  are singing, you Darwin-looking sentience.
                                    I cry into my beard. There’s nothing else to do
 
on Thursdays but think of all October has to live for.    
                  I admit it: my theory of the afterlife is one in which
                                    loved ones use my bones for Halloween decorations.
 
I cannot find a skyscraper to invest in me.
                  I’m sorry. My price is the size of December.
 
                                    ⏕
 
I cannot stop misreading the word “sacred”
                  as “scared.” There’s a Jesus-looking scarecrow
                                    in every church-tilled thought.
 
I lost so much money investing in fear.
                  My discomfort was apparent in the college course
                                    “Megaphonics in Late Capitalism”
 
where I projectiled in place of enunciation.
                  Our nerves save the economy at night.
                                    Money is a wealth of thoughts fleeting
 
and keeping us sleepers from sleep. We invest in
                  slasher films. They feature our bank accounts.
 
                                    ⏕
 
When the news arrives that Oklahomans learned to speak
                  Klingon, I diminish myself to “uh-oh” and consider
                                    the shit storm of English.
 
All languages begin like television:
                  exciting, colorful, for the people.
                                    My phone buzzes
 
and I have myself some Internet. I scroll a grizzly
                  through this planet which ships to me a breath of air.
 
                                    ⏕
 
Dumbfounded by my inability to participate
                  in Friday, I cannot stop destroying the party.
                                    I find myself a floorboard and escape into
 
a break. I find a forgotten sea between the floor
                  and ceiling. I breathe among pissed off starfish.
                                    I swim among ratty orcas and the Wall Street of coral.
 
No one believes me when I emerge soaked in my own waters
                  that that’s where I had been: elsewhere, denying drowning.
 
                                    ⏕
 
“Love will save us in the end.”
                  Pronouncements of love will save us for a time
                                    if we’re convinced we’re in the movie that taught us
 
how to love. When you produce spittle
                  while frantically explaining clouds, it makes me want
                                    to write in legal terms,
 
I’m the biggest fan of your frantic fascinations.
                  On our way to the courthouse, a whole highway
                                    of flowers and cake on the wind.
 
We can have as much as our car-sized fists can carry.
                  We can tell each other, I need you to be kind and breathing
                                    and please leave me alone sometimes.
 
We can get pumped about snacks and newborn dogs.
                  We can wear our hats against the plastic sun.


Isaac George Lauritsen is a writer and illustrator. His work can be found, or is forthcoming, in Bennington Review, Hobart Pulp, Jabberwock Review, Sidereal Review, TIMBER, Your Impossible Voice, on a broadside from Octopus Books, and elsewhere. He lives in New Orleans.
ISSN 2157-8079
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