Allister Nelson

American Dreams: Poems on the Contemporary Mythic Allister Nelson

American Dreams

Maybe some memories run deeper than blood-
They crawl into the marrow, etch lines across the brain

Formed in the womb, they are our ancestors' whispers
In fetal ears.

In murky blackness,
embryos dream-
but of what?

Perhaps it is the past.

The Gold Mountain and silver streets are just
Child's things, dragon's tails- perhaps real, but
Always out of reach.

He cuts his hair, surrenders his language and blood ties
China calls from across the sea- he runs into the waves,
Imagining the water caressing his lover's cheek,
Carrying his love to the Yellow River where
She's washing her qipao in the currents-
The one he traced eternity onto, fingers teasing
At the pale skin beneath.

She dreams of voodoo dances, of Baron Samedi
Riding her- chili peppers, rich cigars, Haitian sound
The dead walk and the gris-gris blesses, oh-
But torn away, torn away from her people, the slavers
Bring her to the land of swamps, yet she'll dance
In Congo Square and New Orleans still, tear up the streets
With her mad mad feet...

Journey into award-winning poet Allister Nelson's debut poetry collection, exploring the thin lines between fragile reality and a mythopoetic realm where gods walk at dusk among us. Here, October chain-smokes Chestertons in a bar in Cleveland, Odin rides a motorcycle gang, and asylums harbor secrets in mad tangles of forgotten goddess's hair.

Collected for the first time, witness what American Dreams are made of. And remember, once you enter the American Dream, it will creep into your bones like old wine - and like December, never leaves. With poems from Apex Magazine, The Showbear Family Circus, Sudden Denouement, and more lyrical prose published for the first time in print, come follow the call of Liberty, beckoning you to her gentle, nocturnal shores, and find the magic in the milieu of the modern.