I sat with a poet I loved like a father, reading poems. They were my poems, and I wanted to know what to do. Let me say this kind of dream has never come to me before. I passed manuscript pages to the poet I loved like a father, and he passed them back to me. Mostly, he said yes. The rest of the dream was like the motion of deer crossing a dirt road at twilight, like clouds rushing ahead of a storm. We sat in cushy armchairs by a gas fireplace, and golden light flickered across his glasses. The librarian with red hair came by and asked us to join the famous poet whose reading was just now starting. Why not? my friend said, and held out his hand to help me onto the stage.
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Kathleen McGookey has published four books of prose poems and three chapbooks, most recently Instructions for My Imposter (Press 53) and Nineteen Letters (BatCat Press). She has also published We’ll See, a book of translations of French poet Georges Godeau’s prose poems. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, December, Field, Glassworks, Miramar, Ploughshares, Quiddity, The Southern Review, and Sweet. She has received grants from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. This past winter, she became an alpine ski instructor.