Kirsten Dunst Is Not Lux Lisbon. I Saw Her on the D Train in Brooklyn Reading a Paperback Novel

Eric Delp

it's like
you make decisions in a dream
you know
the face in the mirror isn't you
in fact
it's not a face at all

as if
you've made decisions in a dream
you sleep
walk down a narrow hall
you slept
with half the junior class

you wear
a white gown to the wedding
you take
the elevator to the penthouse suite
you are
not you
are not

as if
there are no consequences
it's like
the punishment predates the crime
in dreams
you wake up on the football field
you drag your white train down the hall
you forget to forget to forget

in dreams
you fold the pages back behind
as if
the face in the mirror is not
a face
is not
a mirror

---

Eric Delp's poems have appeared in Soft Cartel, Bird's Thumb, Lychee Rind, and elsewhere. His manuscript, e pluribus, was listed as a semi-finalist for the 2020 Nightboat Poetry Prize. He holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi, where he was Poetry Editor for the Yalobusha Review. He lives in St. Petersburg, FL.