Tonight you are between rows of blueberry bushes, pulling the fruit into a bucket hung around your neck. You reach out with both hands, massage each grouping, let them roll between your arms and plink. You pop one into your mouth. You pick one, eat one. Pick one, eat two. You reach out with both hands, massage a bundle of blueberries and trickle them into your palms. You devour the whole handful. You belch, and somewhere a donkey kicks. You giggle, and the breeze smells like churned butter for an instant. You shrink and unslip the bucket’s harness, leap into a bush, your insect wings fluttering. You await the next picker with an armful of berries into which you have scratched the words mischief and joy.
JeFF Stumpo is a survivor of psychosis and PTSD, husband to a PhD chemist, father to an amazing trans child, author of five chapbooks of poetry and a spoken word album, and his work has recently won or been shortlisted for prizes from Subnivean, Cutthroat, and The Plaza Prizes. These selections come from a manuscript of prose poems representing actual dreams and nightmares he's had, as well as the hopes and fears of people he cares about rendered into dreamscapes.