A sleeper
purifies a room.
With each inhalation
the bed rises higher,
with each exhalation
less dust,
more perfection.
A vigil light
reflects through bone;
sleep coats
the slightest irritant
with nacre.
Now, in a kind of counter-levitation,
the bed
is sinking into earth.
The sleepers pull their roofs down
for a quilt,
With every breath the moon
swells brighter,
their nakedness begins
to flower,
ferns
leave imprints on their skin.
Stuart Dybek is the author of several collections of short fiction, including I Sailed with Magellan (FSG, 2003), and a collection of poems, Brass Knuckles. His stories appear frequently in the New Yorker, Harper’s, and the Atlantic Monthly, and in the O. Henry, Pushcart, and Best American Short Stories anthologies. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, and he has received a PEN/Malamud Prize, a Lannan Award, and a Whiting Writers Award.