Sleep Journal

The story that needs to be told
is the one recited in his sleep. 
He wants to carry it into the day
but its words won’t wake with him. 

Now when he speaks, it sounds
like a cracked bell, and the doors
he opens ache on their hinges,
an echo diminishing, the trace 

of a road erased from a map. 
When he asks for directions, 
they always lead to where the rain
drives its nails into the ground.

JANE POIRIER HART

Jane Poirier Hart is a poet from the Boston area. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems and flash fiction have appeared in Los Angeles Review, Southern Poetry Review, the Worcester Review, Ocean State Review, Lily Poetry Review, MER Vox Folio, SWWIM, and Drunk Monkeys.