FEVER DREAMING
by Mitchell Nobis
For Franklin
Our three-year-old wakes at
5:00 a.m., hollering & drenched.
My turn,
I rise.
As he & I rock, the storm
blows in, rumbles & cracks,
makes the day one we must
swim through, 86° and sweating
by afternoon.
Say this for sleep deprivation—
the day is a dream.
The cottonwood snows
over the yard.
I’m unsure what’s
real and what’s exhaustion & heat.
It’s not
a bad way to spend 2017—
after a full night’s sleep,
we’ll be America again.
We’ll rock & swim our way there.
Our hearts will be full.
Mitchell Nobis is a teacher and writer in Metro Detroit where he lives with his wife and young sons. Recently, his manuscript was a semi-finalist for the Philip Levine Prize, and he has poems in or forthcoming from Hobart, Rockvale Review, Ponder Review, New Plains Review, STAND Magazine, 8 Poems, and others. Also, he's a two-time Tupelo Press 30/30 Project poet and a co-author of Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay from Rowman & Littlefield.