It’s so Gatsby that I dream of ragtime, that I’m on a yacht
off the coast
of Long Island
slurping oysters
from abdomens because
Deborah’s drenched
in pearls at her
dream class/
book-signing, ostrich
feathers jutting
from her hat.
Tell me, Deborah,
the meaning of those
bright stones
all over the floor
of my house.
And why am I naked?
But when Deb says she dreams in color, and one time she
danced with a pop icon,
hands go up even
before the Q&A.
They want to know if
the star was Vogue,
did she smell like
retro lingerie,
and were the 80s
between her legs?
Deb tries to interpret
her dream but her
audience wants
lipstick and cigars. Screw
the dream’s meaning
their faces say. I can see it,
they want illusion,
a way out, they want the Roaring Twenties in their beds.

LENNY DELLAROCCA is founding editor and former publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal. Poems forthcoming in Figure 1, Wisconsin Rev., Cimarron Rev and North Dakota Quarterly. He has invented the Epoem a new form on display at his new poetry journal, Witchery, which is embedded online at South Florida Poetry Journal.