Two Poems
by C.C. Russell
Watch C.C. read “Two Dreams, the Logic/ Within Them” and “The idea was…”
The idea was… (the idea in translation)
I was going to buy you a CD player. We would listen to a few discs, see where it went. We were listening, there were pills. That was not all part of the initial idea.
The idea was that I would buy queen-sized satin sheets for your bed and we would sleep /together/ between them. There were articles, drugs. There were pets with so many claws. All of this between us.
I bought you a camera.
We were shooting our own faces.
Look at them, waiting for their secrets to spill, leaks from an older wound.
Two Dreams, the Logic/ Within Them
The first, a nightmare: Doppelgangers and shabby masks resting on too-tight faces.
The second, lips pressed hard against lips after a long time - the rush so very close.
She had red hair. Short, tight curls. Fingernails painted a pastel - a nostalgic sort of yellow. She said she thought that she knew me from somewhere, didn’t she? She smelled like a sort of forgiveness as she leaned in towards me.
And something apocalyptic outside and I run towards it and I don’t return to her before waking.
Earlier, first: It was an experiment, someone trying to make our duplicates and failing in horrible fashion: Empty simulacrums wearing us like masks. So that we could live again. So that we could live forever.
In both dreams, I was homeless and running from something. In both I was lost. In both I was loose inside of my own deadening skin.
C.C. Russell has published his poetry and prose in such journals as The Meadow, The Colorado Review, and Whiskey Island. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net and is included in Best Microfiction 2020. He lives in Wyoming with a couple of humans and several cats. You can find more of his work at ccrussell.net.
