[Click here to listen to the poem.]  

"Dreamscape" (Janet Snell) 

Artist’s notes:
The spiral staircase effect in "Dreamscape" may make a statement about circular thinking, or maybe it asks a more lyrical question about fantasy. The viewer has to decide. — Janet Snell


At dinner, he tells a lie. It flickers like a candle. It drizzles down its dazzle.
He tries to blow it out. It singes all his fingers. He reaches over to pinch its little wick,
but the lie won’t die. It opens to interpretation, gathers force, spreads like rumor,
hides and seeks. It can’t stop. No one will let it. It’s there on Thanksgiving at Uncle
Bob’s, Easter at Aunt Sylvia’s. It goes on for a day, a month, a year. A spotlight
hovers over it, search beams crisscross it. It begins to run. It passes over asphalt
and swamp, cell towers and landlines. Calls are dropped. The man wasn’t answering
anyway. The lie has confused him. It’s no longer the same. The ending has changed.
All of the details. Some of the names.


A peek inside the creative process
“Spin” got its legs after I tried it as a prose poem. Stanzas slowed it down where I wanted speed, and the block form let it find its own tempo. — Cheryl Snell