‘The Dreaming’

Steph Ferguson lives just outside Philadelphia with her dog, Gatsby, and a life filled with creativity, curiosity, and connection. An avid reader and passionate mental health advocate, Steph believes in the power of stories, art, and authentic human connection to make people feel seen and understood. When she’s not reading, Steph can usually be found painting, discovering new places around her town, or enjoying the simple moments of everyday life with Gatsby. Her love of creativity and community continues to shape the way she sees the world.

The Dreaming

This old boarding house

     (with its many shotgun shacks

and antebellum

     mansions) is besieged each night

by the restless, rag-

     tag guerilla army of

the dreams of those that

     lived here before. And the halls

all smell of ozone

     and mimosa and resound

with the soft hybrid

     thrumming of bee's wings and whale-

song, distant looming

     thunder and fleeting will-o-

wisps of radio

     static. And tonight, no one

sleeping here will dream

     of dragonflies or lost loves

or old red trucks stuck

     in the mud and left for dead

a million mistakes

     ago, nor will they dream

of beauty parlors,

     trainyards or any of the

myriad ornate

     and pristine things arranged there,

neatly, along the

     integer lines in between.

No, tonight’s featured

     dreams will be those of hunter-

gatherers who stopped

     to rest here, maybe, as they

made their way across

     the grassy continent, some-

     time before the last ice age.

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, six screenplays, and a few short stories. He is an artist-in-residence at The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review, and other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “And When There Was No Crawfish, We Ate Sand” (co-authored with Abraham Smith, Justin Hamm and John Dorsey). He lives in Kansas City, MO, and in the Ozarks.