ROOM:6.24
Nightmare
by Nancy Kuhl
1.
First he appears gauzy. Then so like
himself; then the painful, wounding
surprise of his rage. In the dust (like
marks left by a bird, by scrape and
feather): shape and line, his angular script.
Ink, an impenetrable trace of him
(I think reading, but can’t understand
a damn thing). Daylight; a sparrow
strikes glass. A nightmare is an idea –
is it not? – dawning, needle-bright.
2.
The mind mistakes itself
for an empty room.
Bibliography and External Links
- Nancy Kuhl is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently On Hysteria (2022) and Granite (2021). She has studied psychoanalysis as a research fellow at the Western New England Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is the curator of poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. For more information, visit: phylumpress.com/on-hysteria-notes.
- Email: nancy.kuhl@yale.edu
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