from d r e a m e d, a dictionary

Tori Grant Welhouse

e • vis • cer • ate

1: She drew from her mouth,
fletching down the arrow.

2: Letting go,
the shot deprived the air
of hesitation.

3: The strike point pierced the heart,
lungs, inflating the woods with breath:
woman, huntress.

4: Stumbling through the woods with a clean wound,
the arrow deflects the ground,

a. thatched with pins and needles.

5: Disbelief teeters on tall posts.
She clutches camouflage,
a. displaces a cold can of beans,
b. tips over a metal stool.

6: The ruminant falls beyond hearing,
but she is attuned to its

white-tailed tremor.

7: Blood always leaves a trail.

8: Dragging the antlered pause,
a. winded,
b. arms aching,

her kill is warm but stiffening,

9: She kneels at the heart
saws belly to buck,
leaves the organs behind.

fe • bric • i • ty

1: In the itchy city of my skin
din gathering
we all live the same fever

2: A wedding is a slow boil
combustion of two people —

metronome the prophetic vein
in the groom’s dome forehead,
tears in the eyes like gasoline

3: Not a stitch of shade,
tiny rivulets of sweat
balloon resources

4: It doesn’t pay to wear hose
or pose

the bride wears decoupage
flushed with enormity,
white gardenia behind her ear

5: A dream involving high
temperatures in others
suggests some coming
excitement

6: Heat is trapped
under the tent,
which scent is meant

we dance in a puddle without shoes,
sighing the incandescent pair.

ging • ly • mus

1. The story about my knee
articulated freely.

2. In one plane,
I could see it in action,
streamlined as speed, inside
the cold perspiration.

3. I was vigorous as pine sap,

4. And just like that —
too much torque.

5. The mountain’s impatience
buckled me to my knees.
a. The hinge joint refusing;
b. Hulking about my shoulders.

6. I was too depressed, perhaps,
despite the soft down around my collar.
Would intimacy have made me cry?

7. Instead my husband packed me ice,
desperate for a squeeze.

8. The hillock swelled
beneath the covers, hurting.

9. I was afraid of ligature damage.
a. I wished I wasn’t aware
of disparate parts,
b. How wrong events could go,

10. The hobbling bore
me out.

©Tori Grant Welhouse

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Tori received her MFA from Antioch International in London. She now lives in the rural Midwest where she is a Regional Director for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) and coordinates the poetry reading series Imagine! She recently published a chapbook Canned with Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has also appeared in Literary Mama, The Greensboro Review, anderbo.com, Melusine, Verse Wisconsin, Broad! Glassworks, and Split Rock Review. One of her poems received Honorable Mention in this year’s Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize Contest. Her poetry website is houseofthetomato.com.