TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

One of the first questions I ask my kids when I see them in the morning, usually while I’m making my coffee, is “Did you have any dreams?” Sometimes the answer is “no,” or “I think so, but I don’t remember them.” But sometimes I get to hear all about the strange adventures they had while they slept. 

Funny how those adventures seem epic—they seem to last all night long—but really they’re probably only a few minutes long. Dreams have their own sense of time, and their own logic. Sometimes people who are long dead show up alive and well. Sometimes you’re a child again. 

When my children tell me about their dreams, it's not uncommon for them to say, “We were at home, but it wasn’t our house,” or “I was with my friends, but they weren’t my real-life friends.” Sometimes I play a cameo role as myself, but sometimes the role of their mother is played by someone else. Dreams are strange like that. Our sleeping brains sometimes offer us alternate versions of familiar people and places. 

When I was my son’s age, I had a dream dictionary. I would wake up in the morning and look up the symbols and events I remembered: being unable to run, or losing my teeth, or trying to hide someplace that was too small for me. I knew even back then that there was no definitive answer, no clear interpretation, but it was fun to seek answers.

These days, I don’t remember my dreams very often, but when I do, they’re like surrealist films. I don’t look up the meaning of the images, but sometimes I do end up using the images in poems. The unconscious mind can make some startling metaphors, so I wish I remembered more of them!

Today’s poem is surreal and unnerving. When I finish reading it, I have that feeling of having woken up from a strange dream, suspecting it has something to tell me.

Going Home
by Joan Kwon Glass

In the kitchen, my father 
slices a tomato. He sees me
& smiles. I pull up a chair
next to him. At age six,
there is only one narrative.
I’ve been gone so long.
My father tells me
to chop the broccoli
but there is no broccoli.
Instead of a knife,
he hands me a ring of keys.
None of the keys unlock
the front door but I keep 
turning the knob. I try 
until I forget which side
of the door I’m on.
In the backyard, my mother
sits on a beach towel, grinning
strangely & eating pages 
from her Bible.
She accuses me of eating
the broccoli. I shake
my keys at her.
My baby sister is three.
She makes wings
out of paper bags & perches 
on the kitchen counter.
She stays like that forever. Alive.
Someone is wailing nearby. 
At first, I think it’s coming from
the neighbor’s house but
then I realize my mouth is open
& it’s my voice.
Can anyone hear me?
I’ve been gone so long.
Inside the house,
wallpaper roses drop their petals
like silent, pretty bombs.

"Going Home" by Joan Kwon Glass. Used by permission of the poet.