Mediums can only half sleep, plugged into the constant dead, who never rest but complain and petition, want favors and reassurances, want even love, of a limited kind, before the disaster of forgetting descends. Next to me in bed, wrapping the sheets tighter, you are a breathing wall of great shoulders; cried of hounding, making fists like a child with a pencil, record is your only recourse, you on one side, the long ago decreased with a champagne glass pressed to the other.
Merridawn Duckler is a poet, playwright. Runner-up: residency Arizona Poetry Center, judge Farid Matuk. Finalist: Center for Book Arts, Tupelo Press, Sozoplo Fiction Fellowship, Oregon Play Prize. Fellowships/awards: Writers@Work, NEA, Yaddo, Squaw Valley, SLS St. Petersburg, Russia, Southampton Poetry Conference. Editor at Narrative and international philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.