Recurring Dream
by Avra Wing
It is night. We are in the train station
of a small European town. The walls
and ticket booth are wood. The floor
is tile—black and white. Glass lamps
atop the benches glow yellow,
and you are shouting at me.
I have forgotten the bags, or dropped them,
letting them fall from my hands.
They crash on the hard floor,
the locks spring open, our things spew out
while the other travelers step around us
with looks of pity and amusement.
It must be that I did something
like this, something that will keep us here
frozen, unmoving, in a place meant
for journeys. But were we to go on?
Towards what? Wakefulness?
And where were we before? Another dream?
Or was this our only stop,
this scene—your anger, my sabotage—
in an unnamed place
where connections can’t be made,
and it is always night,
and we can neither arrive nor depart.
____________________________
Avra Wing is the author of the novel Angie, I Says, upon which
the 1994 movie Angie—starring Geena Davis, Stephen Rea, and
James Gandolfini—was based. Wing’s essays have been published
in The New York Times, and her poetry has most recently appeared
in Hanging Loose and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her memoir,
Doorway on the Mountain, can be found at www.onlineoriginals.com.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2010 Next page ►
It is night. We are in the train station
of a small European town. The walls
and ticket booth are wood. The floor
is tile—black and white. Glass lamps
atop the benches glow yellow,
and you are shouting at me.
I have forgotten the bags, or dropped them,
letting them fall from my hands.
They crash on the hard floor,
the locks spring open, our things spew out
while the other travelers step around us
with looks of pity and amusement.
It must be that I did something
like this, something that will keep us here
frozen, unmoving, in a place meant
for journeys. But were we to go on?
Towards what? Wakefulness?
And where were we before? Another dream?
Or was this our only stop,
this scene—your anger, my sabotage—
in an unnamed place
where connections can’t be made,
and it is always night,
and we can neither arrive nor depart.
____________________________
Avra Wing is the author of the novel Angie, I Says, upon which
the 1994 movie Angie—starring Geena Davis, Stephen Rea, and
James Gandolfini—was based. Wing’s essays have been published
in The New York Times, and her poetry has most recently appeared
in Hanging Loose and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her memoir,
Doorway on the Mountain, can be found at www.onlineoriginals.com.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2010 Next page ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 5, Number 1
(Spring 2010)
Copyright © 2010
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 5, Number 1
(Spring 2010)
Copyright © 2010
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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