12 Dec and then a second dream
And then a second dream
by Luciano Iacobelli
beached on my lawn where at night I cool my feet
(the small patch of grass miraculously stretched into a playing field)
was a decomposing whale
a stranded sublimity
an exiled size
a deleted portion of the sea’s magnitude
a proportion decommissioned by the universe
an evacuation of all the blessings ever bestowed on the animal
exited the blowhole
a swarm of fireflies
had I know the water would creep this far inland
I would have moved to higher ground
avoided the putrefaction
the meat and blubber decaying into cracked icons and baptismal font
broken pews and organ pipes
and one of the eyes was an altar strewn with ashes and playing chips
scattered decks with disintegrating suits
evidence of a game terminated long ago
a smell of loss in the air weighing down the atmosphere
a failed and final gamble