Late Empire. Lisa Olstein

like a dog’s run in sleep

      through made-up meadows.

      Every breath borrowed, every breath

      owed. We’ve been going about it

      the wrong way: kissing with our mouths

      full of rings, trying to read the future

      in the prism cut of snow. No amount

      of calling means someone’s there

      not answering on the other end of the line.

      No amount of belief or disbelief keeps

      the plane from falling from the sky.

      All around the world we light up

      like stars, like searchlights, like

      the map of the earth we actually are.

      We talk about talking: this sensor

      to that satellite, a ping, a blip,

      an uneventful goodnight. We think

      about thinking: how distances are

      calculated, how long the mind

      of a machine might hum. Malaysia

      then is everywhere tonight’s meadow

      of sleep or no sleep, of dark waves

      cradling dreams of flying. Tonight

      we are all Malaysia Airlines

      as we like to say, as we have learned

      to say, as it somehow comforts us

      to say. Tonight, this week, for as long as

      we can bear it or until something

      pulls us away we are all one hundred

      and fifty-three Chinese nationals and

      six Australians and three

      Americans—and it doesn’t feel to us,

      and we are very rational girlfriends

      who also happen to be scientists,

      that they’re gone—and twenty men

      who worked for a weapons manufacturer

      and the Defense Minister who is also

      acting Prime Minister and the mainland

      army night watchmen dozing in front of

      their radar screens. We are all kissing

      something dark tonight, in the dark

      tonight, with our words or no words

      but we are going about it the wrong way.

      WHAT WE’RE TRYING TO DO IS CREATE A COMMUNITY OF DREAMERS

      Horses, airplanes, red cars,

      running. The Japanese sleep

      less but do they dream less?

      What do women in Stockholm

      dream about in wintertime?

      Show me every car dream.

      Show me every car dream

      in Moscow. Show me every

      red-car dream that involved

      men living in Las Vegas.

      Compare that to Tokyo or Paris.

      Do famous people dream

      differently? If you have

      more money in the bank?

      Can we run an algorithm,

      can we quantify, can we teach

      that? The distance widens

      and narrows, sometimes

      a grapefruit, sometimes

      a beach ball. Invisible data.

      They say Einstein came up

      with relativity in a dream.

      What if you could go back

      and find it?

      WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN SOON

      Maestro, meet me in the dark.

      The truth is we prefer it this way,

      stumble-gay and keening, I mean

      preening, like the black-tongued

      parrots on permanent display.

      Herman the Giant German

      Rabbit suffers exactly one fool

      per day, the smiling silver one

      bringing him food on a scuffed

      aluminum tray. Past a certain age,

      you don’t ask a woman how she does

      her hair no matter how elaborate

      the braid. Straight queens and dry

      drunks, fellow former future kings,

      the gerbils of Kazakhstan—desert

      rats, in point of fact—have something

      to tell us about death riding shotgun

      in our subway cars. Life is always

      left-handed. Sleeping bees are

      immobile bees whose bodies and legs

      hang in the direction of gravity.

      Lucky ones who find homes,

      don’t expect the left-behind to

      thank you for remembering.

      IT ALL LIGHTS UP

      It’s hard to feel spry in any room

      they’ve pushed you in or out of

      as if the walls remember the wheels,

      their muted whine, and your own

      whimpering cries as rosy-fingered dawn

      licked you clean with her rough tongue.

      We’re all going to die, you’ve heard

      a thousand times from your own

      mother’s mouth. You never believed her,

      how could you, she invented life,

      but then one day stuck in traffic

      you catch yourself muttering the line

      and it sticks and every stupid argument

      comes back to you stupider still

      and your petty feelings about the special

      Employee of the Month parking space

      and all those nights you settled

      for takeout and a blindfold. Here

      at the university, the corridors are

      labeled Corridor. The visualization

      laboratory is dark. Inside, scanning for

      shark-shaped shadows, the surfer knows

      to borrow the seal’s suit is to borrow

      its nightmares, too. Maybe today

      species are outdated modes of technology,

      and this is why we give them up

      so easily. Sometimes there’s a glitch

      in