Hoping to remember hands, feet, and feathers, I'm jumping across fish-like stepping-stones in a creek. Bright suns and sharp clouds impregnate an alien. We sit and eat chicken. Yeah, I remember now: we were driving to Church's Chicken, near a telephone pole. There was a lot of water. And arms coming out of the water. I saw spikes like those coming out of a lion-fish. Also, a plush, cozy pillow -- rather like sitting on a well-needed toilet. That old cat, that old cat. If only I could remember to feed it. It likes lemons. And rats. But in the past, its rats had to be mutated. They had to have scaly skin. The rats were large; they could really do damage to a cat. The mutation was rather like that which mannified the maid. What a chin on that maid. I dream of T.V. Surfing on T.V. Juicy Fruit is gonna move you. Move you to violence, perhaps -- what with the loss of limb, hair, and teeth. I see bones. Lots of bones. Should I wake? No choice. What did I dream?

-David Eshelman

bright flashes of light as i fall asleep. hands reaching into a river. fish slip through my grasp. the hot day grows hotter as the body of a pregnant woman floats to the surface. the sounds of a nearby street attract my attention and i walk toward the noise. i walk along the shore with its wet sand and scattered bird feathers. as i walk i look down at my hands to see them reaching. i pet a cat that has found its way to me. the cat chases a rat as it runs past. i take the hand of a masculine man and we walk back to the waves of the river. as we walk on, our hair falls out, our limbs fall off, our teeth fall out, and our feet walk away without our bodies. i wake feeling refreshed and late for class.

--Matthew Hemesath

I am in a remote Italian town. There is a waterfall cascading down the side of one of those buildings set into the hills. I espy some action, and sure enough I see a bevy of fish, tropical fish, swimming through the water and then flying way out into the sky, as if in search of something. One fish in particular is pretty hungry. He is suddenly on earth walking over to the Italian kid simply known as R25 (or as they pronounce it in Italian, are-uh 25). The fish approaches him, and in a cross species sexual twist, licks the unassuming boy's thigh. The boy ignores the fish. He has been taught not to talk to strange fish. And, he realizes it is time to go to the bathroom. Along the way he meets up with his 2 American Indian friends, Leg With Eyes, and Preg Woman With Pink Feather. The latter, in a burst of enthusiasm, expresses her great love of chicken. So what else is new? The boy, R-uh 25, though, is in urgent need to reach the john, but is hampered by the orange light. It is taking forever to turn green. R-uh glances up at the sky, and is shocked to see a mangle of arms reaching down towards earth. "What's-uh-going-on-uh" he thinks. Indeed. What is-uh, going on. He runs past a building and thinks he sees an Indian getting tarred and feathered. And if that's not bad enough, a chicken gets killed by a cat. Feathers all over. It is a rueful day. But wait, it's not real at all. It's faux. He comes upon the famous mural painted on the side of the old municipal-uh building (well, you know, the Indian getting tarred and feathered and the cat killing the chicken mural). He is just getting back his composure, when suddenly, Silvio (nee Silvia), the town's tough, he-man, semi-naked transsexual runs past him, in search of his/her bottle of Noxema. Life is hard, and so is his/her skin. That is why, most of the day, Silvio (ia) sits at home watching reruns on Nick in Day, in a vain attempt to get back to gentler times. He longs to see reruns of the medicore, yet pleasant movie version of Annie (ooh, he/she loves Daddy Warbucks' bald head) and goes gaga whenever they show the 80's version of the 60's musical Hair. In fact, anything that will . . . . BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Oh no. Oh noooo. Oh noooooooooooooooo. It was just a dream. I was just dreaming. Was I? I think I was. But . . . but . . . I can't remember anything. Maybe I wasn't dreaming. Oh shit. I never remember my dreams. And look, it's cloudy and raining outside. Well, the sun wiill come out tomorrow. the end.

--Cliff Simon

i had a long, thin dream, covered in gold flashes and sounding like crinkly colored acetate. in the beginning were frames like windows, lit from the inside with specular gold. did i see candlelight? the fish were coming and going, swimming in a particulate sea. a king, the 25th in his hair-going-up line, was enthroned in the victorian style. his absent queen sat on a (toilet?) softnesses of surface, stacked eyesight, linear patterns, overlays, spirals and waves. there are reaching feet and hands, open mouths, keys and laughter. the numbers 25 and 26 are important. a young woman, caught fertile in an outstretched hand. and feather-beds. i could sleep here. there is a tunnel and i am afraid of getting stuck but somehow i already find i cannot get out. the number 60. time is galaxial and planet rings are spinning, maintaining overall balance. but the president, the shrub, is somehow insinuated. what , exactly, does he have to do with balance? a mouse appears with a rudolph nose. he is walking on a ridge and i sense he is going somewhere. but a purple hand is holding his tail. and he is leaving a field of purple pink yellow blue green hearts. he uses noxema on his nose nightly. a kite, a truck and a stick figure fly across the horizon. all the vehicles here sport images of benjamin franklin. more feet, now leaving footprints. another number, 46. someone is thinking "wish i could find those colored glasses." eyes are everywhere, watching. and somewhere in the distance, the sound of a lazy bee.

--Samantha Krukowski

We all fall to sleep so easily, what surprise, and begin floating on a wave of glittering sighs and stretching limbs, float turns to swim. We are swimming with colorful fish through a sea of liquid glass, blue and red, shifting shapes and shaping shifts. The fish sprout legs and we follow their steps into Cliff Simon's living room, where he sits on a golden throne next to a toilet labeled ActLab- he does not acknowledge us and writes furiously on pieces of paper he then throws into the toilet. All the fish get eaten by Cliff's cat. Suddenly the room darkens and shrinks around us and we are huddled in a womb- we feel our mother going about her business of the day around us, we are carried in her belly happily, pleasantly, we are all rocked to sleep by her beautiful soothing voice. We awaken on an empty street covered in footprints of all colors and sizes, but none of the prints belong to us. There is a stoplight above us, with green, yellow and orange lights flashing intermittently. We all have the choice to walk, fly, or swim. We play. Hands applaud. We laugh. Feathers float from out mouths. We hear a distant, deep ticking and we all get anxious. Mice scurry across our feet. A large intimidating man, whose presence is undercut by the sparkly apron he wears, makes us sit in nice little rows and lectures us about what big sissies we are. Someone pulls his pants down and while he's distracted we all dive into an ocean that has just appeared to the right of us where there used to be a field. We are all surfing pros and an enormous wave lifts us up high and crashes us into a suburban neighborhood. We wash up on the front lawns of the neighborhood, some of us have lost hair, limbs are severed, teeth knocked out, strange skin conditions develop . . . and then hands without bodies help us to our reattached feet and guide us up into the air to a cloud that vibrates, we settle in and it feels so warm and good and soft but something is pulling us up and out and beyond and above and awake-

--Lucia Del Vecchio

A yellow pathway, like the Wizard of OzÖ.Dorothyís footprints, Samanthaís size! Graffiti-- thoughts, blots, plots, even some clots-- all covered with shimmering silvery powder. The rot setting into the severed limbs that fail to attract the mouse who looks the other way. Smoke from the burning houses competing with the cloudsówho will soar further? Yellow eyes watching all--eyes of Oedipus devoid of pus. Watching all. The class stares at the yellow pathway, the yellow pathway stares back at it.

--Abhijat Joshi

I emerge from a TV and found myself surfing. There were digital sharks trying to eat me. I kept going higher and higher on the wave and the sharks started flying out of the water and becoming more like clouds and there were tropical fish below us speaking a unique language. They seemed like gurus or really wise fish somehow telling me that I was going to give brith. I felt my stomach expand and suddenly I was traped in a stoplight. I was yellow and green was above me and orange was below me. I leaked out into a pool of blood but now I was in a nightclub and it was in Mexico with a real festive atmosphere like Cinco de Mayo. I was on the dance floor and everyone kept waving their hands like a ritualized dance and smiling huge smiles. A woman with a feathery boa started dance around me. I suddenly rushed to a toilet and threw up. There was a dead cat in the corner on the cold tile floor. I had to finish a crossword puzzle before I could leave the bathroom, but I could leave earlier if I could tell the time, except the numbers on the clock were all twisted and out of sequence. I kept saying it's "seven O eleven O clock." There were lemons floating in the toilet and so I climbed in. I began thinking of Ralph Nader and if these lemons had chemicals in them or were natural. Nader told me he was prsident of "Tribal Mice." He showed me an official badge. Nader suddenly became a manaquin of Captain Kirk and he was selling Noxema. A TV sucked me in and I was surfing inside it. Then a kite penetrated the TV set like a sperm cell going into an egg. I was born out of the TV but as Daddy Warbucks with no hair and not teeth. I felt like something had permantently changed. I remembered the disco in Mexico and the waving hands. I saw my alarm clock exploding and then it was rining and I woke up.

--Michael Kranes

Today I had a strange, colorful dream. It started off with a glorious slide into sleep... soft bed, soft covers, befroe crossing over into unconsciousness. Shapes and fleeting ideas playing behind my eyelids before my mind rolls over a slight bump into dreams. Place -- I'm at a beach. not hot but a neutral temperature. Sand and water, objects scattered about -- making it difficult to walk. A crowd of people -- they all want something from me, I'm still walking -- distracted now rather than peacefully watching my step.. I'm becoming frustrated and then there's the sudden realization that I've forgotten to do something very, very important. I'm behind schedule, and I need to hide my mistake from others... Then the pace slows -- wandering through a natural environment, then I come upon a city. There's a large, slightly abrasive man in a pink gingham dress, obnoxious people and the clamor of TV and the city -- people in disorder, all terrified about some catastrophe, but I'm not worried. I'm in a bubble, walking through them, headed somewhere on a calm mission. Then the jolt of the alarm. Oh hell. I don't want to wake up after too few hours of sleep... must write down dream... writing, lying back in bed... alarm goes off again and I realize that I hallucinated writing. Groan and roll over.

--Clare Major

It is like a series of vignettes that seem to be sewn together by a thread of the unlikely. We seem to be moving backwards through this geometric landscape. We see a foot pass by, followed by a severed hand with a pulse still beating. We are distracted by a rainbowfish that swims by Cliff, who has climbed inside the brain of Dr. Seuss. As we move through this whimsical world, we come upon a pregnant woman, who is stopped with us at a sreet light. As the light turns yellow, it cries, "Just Me." As the light then turns red, it shouts, " This is where I begin to fly!" At this, the preganant woman peels back the skin of her belly. We crawled inside. Continuing to walk backwards, now inside the belly of the pregnant woman, everything seems to be even more heightened. Our footprints start to sparkle. We pass over a giant wall of blue, with seemingly little effort. As we land, we feel something squish under our foot. Oops! We just crushed Mr. Bill. Feeling very disturbed by this, we begin to run. Not paying attention to where we are going, we find ourselves in a forest of hands and feet. There is one especially large hand with needles growing out of the fingers, sitting in the middle of a clearing. Daytime has passed into night, and instead of a moon, a lemon surrounded by rings, rises in the evening sky. A giant tribal mouse with a rudolph nose tells us a story about each of the bones in our foot. This upset us greatly. Something startled us - Ring! - Fight or Flight - Ring! Nightmares are Exile, Dreams are a Fool's Paradise. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

--Lisa Jordan

I had the strangest dream last night. Before falling asleep, I told myself over and over that I had to remember my dream. When I finally fell asleep, it started as a series of vibrant colors and shapes. Then, I was at the ocean, the sand sparkled. A flock of swans flew by and a very colorful school of fish could be seen from where I was standing. The sun began to set. I followed a set of footprints to a surfboard. I started to surf. I remember thinking, "why can't it be like this in real life". Then things started to get a bit scary. There was a locked door that I couldn't open and time started to move really quickly. I began to feel afraid. It was starting to get dark and I was lost and confused. Then, I realized it was a dream, I just kept thinking, "I want to wake up!" I could hear my alarm going off. I was torn, I knew I had to get up and write down my dream, but I was still tired. I hit snooze and slept a few more minutes.

--Heather Wagner

Dear Susan, while you were away we all took a nap and had a fantastic collective dream. We were floating above the forgotten remnants of Eastern Blocks when from below the sun split,spun, sparkled and fragmented into shimmering images of immortality. We became amorphous images in the technicolor sky.Then, following the footprints of rainbow fish into a prismatic lavatory, we could not contain the urge to release dormant energy in honor of the glorious gaze of pregnancy looming over us. Outside in the glittering gold rain, the traffic light was in perfect alignment to foresee the mysterious anti-it unfolding the prophesy of oppositism heralded by the suicide of the moon. This event was anxiously awaited by musicians, who longed to defile the prismatic lavatory with death feather excrements. Thus the felicitous kitten, being crushed by starvation, was superceded by the Tribal Mouse Art Expo, whose revolutionary manifesto spanned the ethos of cosmic time lemons and standa! rdized the ritualistic ridicule of human folly in physicality, chemistry, and technology. We were relieved when the movement rolled into the ocean, and as the sunspots sang in unison to our time of mind the dream became exiled from reality as the nightmare fooled the paradise of replica.

--Erich Ragsdale

Hi. I'm home now and so moved by the dreams you've sent me....here's one for you and two attachments I tried desperately to send you last Tuesday before your reading class. Love, Susan 25 huge transsexual mice are sitting tall neatly on 25 toilets the seats of which they have carefully greased with noxema. This is the thing to do and they do it so well. They sit in a row, and one by one, they flush...(zoom in to toliet bowl which is really an ocean)... fish are leaping out of the waves and catching flying hands and feet for a good meal. The mood is festive in these toilets, and the weather good. Pregnant fish are everywhere. It is springtime and all is well. The mice are not really aware of the incredible world beneath them...it is, after all, beneath them. Suddenly, the stewardess announces that "if you could have them out and ready for me I would really appreciate it." Humph I say, what is the world coming to. Back to the idyllic ocean scene for me... Just as the mice agree to put on their lipstick, she says "Are you going to turn it off? We are about to land." LAND? I am in the air. The air where I write to my students, and sleep, and dream. Land is where I try to send messages in apartments with no phones and never seem to get through. AIR is good. The mice agree. They are becoming agitated, just when it was getting to be fun....breathe deeply..... Where was I...ah yes, the mice were just getting ready to turn it ON not off... "Whenever we fly in the friendly skies...we take special care of your safety..." In the world of dreams, daydreams and what everyone else calls reality, I find myself flying over snowy peaks on the next lag of the journey and contemplating your dream-gifts. Thank you, and thank God we get to go to the places of dreams and daydreams in our creation-world journeys. Personally, I have much more fun contemplating the transsexual mice than the weird energy coming from the man sitting two seats away from me who just threw his bag of nuts at me because he didn't want them. An act of kindness and agression at the same time. "Although the bag does not inflate." Most bags I know inflate. But now that's old women, not the fun traNsEXual mICE. Ok, ok we're taking off again....lag number three. I fall asleep. Asleep..."To sleep, perchance to dream...."

--Susan Tsu