Jessica Purdy
Summer 2025 | Poetry
Lucid Dream Vibrations
The dream is inside a structure. A house you lived in before or only ever see in dreamland. You’re covered by a dome. Or inside a tunnel draped with tarps. The dream is inside. Interior. Your eyes buzz. Your pillow pulls your hair in its fist, your head downshifts deeper. All you hear is your hair sizzle. Here is a landscape with facets of real life. Escapes. Narrowness. Bricks. Soggy bogs underfoot. Barefoot with bees stinging your tender toes. Your hips on a spit. Basements with mud. Piles of old suitcases. Wallpaper patterned with peonies. Screeds. Some people are willing to change their waking life. You, though, will keep batting away demons. Refuse to scrutinize and interpret what is written there. Scrying uses mirrors or crystals. Divine the truth. Read the word “cry” inside. See the letters. Hear it rip from your lungs against your will. See your hand flutter toward the ceiling on your back. Your eyes are closed. Remember the emblems you’ve seen. Some resemble black iron furnaces. Mouths with slotted teeth.
Jessica Purdy holds an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), and The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Spiritual Literature, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry, flash fiction, and reviews appear in About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, The Night Heron Barks, SoFloPoJo, Gone Lawn, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Exeter, NH.