Jane L. Carman
December 2013
Jane L. Carman is the founder of the Festival of Language and codirector of the Publications Unit at Illinois State University where she received her Ph.D. and is a former Sutherland Fellow. She prefers writing that takes in genreless breaths and lives by rules that continuously morph into the unfamiliar. Her work can be found in Devil’s Lake, Santa Clara Review, Mixed Fruit, JAC, eilmae, Pequin,580-Split, American Book Review, Dirty, Dirty (Jaded Ibis Productions 2013), among others and is forthcoming in Palooka.
Festival of Language events: 2009 Chicago AWP; 2012 Denver AWP; 2011 DC AWP; 2012 Chicago AWP; 2013 Boston AWP; 2013 Lansing SSML; 2013 Milwaukee M/MLA; 2014 Seattle AWP
A reading eXperiment events: 2013 Boston AWP
Mad World
faces of strangers, faces of friends, of foes close in, pass through her, featureless orbs in orbit, then nothing, then in orbit again—epigraph
she dreams herself in a short red car rims metallic in the sun rolling backwards the scene rushing forward to the sounds of lynard skynard ye ll ow gr ay da sh li n es c on ne ct this baby can handle a turn baby can handle a turn baby can
she reaches a flat-a-way the odometer can’t keep up shes rolling running rushing into a tree or telephone pole or brick building her head pressed against broken glass blood spilling or only dripping onto the pavement or in the crow-vetch-lined ditch tickling and trickling into the open mouths of lilies
she dreams herself wrapped in the arms of a harness atop a tree-matted cliff or atop a needled pine an eagle passing above or she is the eagle the scent of pine musk of a fox smack of the river floating up as she rushes toward the water and snaps back to be near or to be the eagle then
down and to the clifftop the hardrock side and little survivor trees a blur and back down and a snap but this time she’s swimming toward the blue but not of the sky she is swimming so fast that the voices cannot find their way in
she dreams herself in a business suit and pencil skirt in a suite tapping a laptop calling home to two daughters blonde curls around pink faces and a steroid-enhanced rugged husband perpetually five-o-clock-shadowed and they love her and miss her already and the husband laughs that they should make more children and she can tell she can smell something in the background at the backside of the screen back of the scene an uneasy presence she can taste sulfur in the thundersounds and she says the words love and miss and soon and love and there is a silence the humidity of sin frizzing the curls staining the blonde
never having dreamed
never trusting a dream
she doesn’t dream
doesn’t believe in dreams
she dreams herself a rock goddess on a rock stage pyrotechnics exploding behind on every side surrounding her in sparkling flames and fumes she’s a caged tiger pawing out reaching toward the sea of waves the sea of hands and feature-free orbs when she reaches closer they lunge forward foreign and familiar the stage caves in fading flames lighting up glints of metal glimpses of smoking synthetics snapshots of nothing before she feels the weight of some thing pressing against her breast tightening with each exhale movingincloser deeper deeper deeper
she dreams herself facedown sunblasted in a desert an oasis swimming yards away her limp legs twist backwards her arms crossed under her chest beneath her holding a rose or cactus or lucky hare’s foot the oasis crowd is wild stigmas and stamen swaying she sees the curves of their bodies dancing or loving or convulsing in death the long waves of their hair their faces sunbright and indistinguishable they gaze at her with empty sockets and continue to groove and grind on heatwaves drinking umbrellaed glasses of blue the oasis floating away
never having dreamed
she doesn’t dream
doesn’t trust dreams
doesn’t believe
