In the city of vivid dreams, I take a call
from a friend. He’s coming to the potluck, he says,
he’ll bring eggs. Wild, I think,
because in the dream I just had, he brought eggs
to a party, cracked and leaking into a clear plastic cup
labeled “Opportunities.” He comes to the party. He brings eggs
again and again, every night for a week.

On the first night he doesn’t show up,
my teeth fall out and I don’t bother
to replace them. I take the albumen from the leftover eggs
and smear it on my gums.
In the morning, my mouth is full
of blooming daylilies, although it is still dark outside.

I go to the doctor for help because the florist is closed.
The doctor turns out to be a midwife.
She tells me the flowers are beautiful. She pulls
an orange octopus from my uterus and advises me
to switch to a gluten-free diet
and a new brand of contraceptives. I can only accept her suggestions.
She disposes of the cephalopod through an open window
with a tennis racket and a strong forehand.

I play hooky at the aquarium
and make moose faces at the residents,
but they mistake my antlers for anemone.
Three clownfish perish
trying to get to my hair through the glass.

You’re so appealing, says a passing oceanographer,
Then, he asks me out to dinner.
We eat vegan grain sculptures together by the harbor.

When the waiter brings
seaweed ice cream for dessert,
the oceanographer cries on my shoulder
until the restaurant becomes the harbor.
I tell him, I have to go back up the hill now
and write poetry on dry land.
I’m a poet, I say, and I mean this
sincerely for the first time. He’s unimpressed.

Up on the hill, I go
to my professor’s office
because that is her title
and she asks me if I am sure
I want to be a zookeeper.

I say, Oceanographers are too sad—
I have to do what I love best.

But you’re a lousy zookeeper,
she says. All the monkeys run amok,
complaining about the filth in their pens.
It’s their filth, I say. It’s their pen.

Go take a swim, she says. The fish might find you
appealing, she says. I’ve heard that before, I say,
but I can’t remember where.
I’m staying, I tell her. It’s my dream.

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