noreen ocampo
SOME NIGHTS I THINK I WON'T DREAM OF YOU AND THEN
we live in an ocean town,
but neither of us is a fish. I am
a universally acclaimed
Tokyo-drifter. You are my noisy backseat
driver, picnic basket-holder,
smushing egg sandwiches
as I triumphantly hydroplane.
Let’s thread rickety mountain roads
and race these monsoon trains.
The ocean loves my wheels but
only enough to chase them. Tell me
a secret. Open your eyes. You say:
keep your hands on the wheel.
When we were softer, you slipped
your hand into my hands
whenever someone else was driving,
and you never liked wheels warping space.
I know how your stomach churns,
even as mountains turn to pasture
hiding home just uphill. I’m sorry
we didn’t get to picnic like I promised
and the ocean ate our gazebo whole.
I imagine she was hungry
with good intent.
EXPOSURE
it’s cold in the double storm,
curling my feet into three blankets
of snow. some nights, I worry
too much to close my eyes
yet I dream— somehow—
of a boy leaning over me
in his car, my palm a crescent
against his wrist.
night has been something
to recover from. I used to
dream the same cruel things
in succession: ankles folding,
plum-pink, the unwanted heat
of rough hands. he shows me
the way the chest crumples.
last night, I dreamed
a dream within a dream
& could not breathe
a word. by morning,
still the shadow.
Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino writer and poet based in Atlanta. She is the author of the forthcoming micro-chapbook, Not Flowers (Variant Literature, 2022), and her poems can also be found in Taco Bell Quarterly, Hobart, and {m}aganda Magazine, among others. She edits for Marías at Sampaguitas and the COUNTERCLOCK blog and studies at Emory University. Say hi on Twitter @maybenoreen!
previous // back to issue // next