I Have Been Dreaming of a Time Machine
To come and come
in the abandoned
garden
skin vines
a way of beginning
to stay up all night
with you again
young and blind
to the spectacular
death of each minute
how something has bitten
the persimmons
while we rolled in the creature
dirt and how we take
because we must keep
eating to see at last
the clocks emerge garbage
trucks and faithless crows
in the unrepentant gray of morning
then to not feel sadness
on the drive to the station and stand close
beside a waiting train
oh god it will hurt
and we’ll eat that too and say
nothing of who is left behind
and who returns to another
river scoured singing
Emma Trelles is the Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara and the author of Tropicalia (U. of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she has received fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and from CantoMundo. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry, Best of the Net, and Big Enough for Words. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in New England Review, Chiricú Journal, Terrain’s Letter to America Series, and SWWIM. She teaches at Santa Barbara City College and curates the Mission Poetry Series.
