The Land of Nod

Happy Sunday, friends.  Apologies to fans of the long-running Photo of the Week series—the way this week went down, I simply don't have a photo for the blog.  What I do have is a new poem!  & I'm pretty excited about that, because the last poem I wrote prior to dates back to early May.  This new poem—#4 in the following sequence—was written yesterday.  Since the other poems in the sequence appeared on the blog back in the spring, I'm taking the liberty of posting the sequence as it now stands for the sake of context.  Hope you enjoy them!

The Land of Nod #1

nighttime busy as a ship the stars frozen the
radio signals crackling along a north wind an
orange teddy bear ditched beside the highway in

April—in the middle of life under a eucalyptus—
you must excise all the connections—in the middle
of life in a sodium light spotlight, the moon’s

fingernail, the porch on Myrtle Street its
chipped paint railing & clothesline—nighttime busy as
a semi truck on a 6% grade a sheet of

particle board a  toy cat’s porcelain
face with inscrutable grin, in a sepia photograph a
gin bottle in the mirror—in the middle

of life on interstate 70 west of St Louis the gas tank
leaking—a rope hammock above the
blue blue crocuses its dreams decomposing:

there was a guitar with f-holes an
N-scale train depot, a wind-up toy duck
dressed like a clown on a trike but

wound down—a fire escape in green streetlight glow—
nighttime busy as a ship off the Oregon coast a
frozen light in blackness between dreams


The Land of Nod #2


the molecules congeal the molecules dis-
sipate, The Seven Samurai black-white-gray on TV in
a Bozeman Comfort Inn—you’re learning exhaustion’s alphabet

one cup of coffee at a time—steam from a Vicks vaporizer—
another Silver Surfer comic book, magenta &
gray splayed across a card table’s diamond veneer in-

lay—you are floating between your body’s past &
what’s to come several inches above a green
upholstered sofa, the molecules

congeal the molecules dissipate—a spiral
notebook covered with doodles of your name &
geometry’s leftovers—a grandfather clock with wooden

gears & lead weight—you are floating between
solid & air like a bright yellow school bus
in November flurries—short of breath in an Astoria

courtyard in March drizzle—an oxygen concentrator’s
lugubrious sigh in murky hours—an
espresso machine huffing between the poem’s

syllables on Valencia Street on an evening pungent as
licorice—you are learning exhaustion’s alphabet
floating gray between your body’s dimensions


The Land of Nod #3

fractured sunlight in a strange
land helter-skeltered in yellow wind:
black umbrella, white paper box kite, a

fistful of goldenrod, an email arriving thru
ether any given Sunday—an array of
things that may in fact be hopeless: a

pink inflatable Easter bunny nodding in yellowish
breeze beneath a pine beside the highway—
where are you going—fractured sunlight

a plate of toast, the the silver-yellow
clouds to the east, the lies you told yourself—
an array of things: a packet of Carter Hall

pipe tobacco—you are always awake—
laundry shaking on a rope clothesline in
yellow gusts & lies you tell yourself a-

mong thin air & fragments—anxious
rib cage, a box kite’s pine frame
snapping when you don’t let it go


Land of Nod #4


a good place to be from—dead
cottonwood the century rose climbs—
are you in a good place now—a 

dogwood in traumatic blossom a-
cross the street from the ER—fear as-
cending rhythmic in work boots on stair treads—dead

cottonwood the century rose thorns in-
crementalize—a hospital gurney within gray branches—
a good place to be from—

green-yellow godawful
streetlights buzzing the scale of trauma’s
shining increments—a good place:

gray dead cottonwood treetop—an in-
cremental century rose—a night
without steps climbing up to it


Jack Hayes
© 2011