Dream Apartment by Lisa Olstein

The poems in Lisa Olstein’s Dream Apartment are image-driven powerhouses, almost but not quite devoid of straight narrative. We enter another way of thinking through them. Olstein is masterful in her use of sound and language, such as in the poem “Kiss,” which is almost Plath-like in its sonic repetition. Each section is distinct, but the voice carries across them as they deal with rural food production, its ethics, and the food chain; a fairytale world; a naturalist view of the pandemic; personal loss; the nature of humans. A forest grows through a corpse. We list how to destroy magical creatures. We see the lingering afterimages a survivor experiences after a loss. We see the complexity of good and bad (the same) humanity. I’ve loved Olstein’s work for years, and after this book, love it even more. Buy here.

from “Kiss”

It’s true I

rue. I tore

myself apart

for you and you

loved to watch

me do it loved

to watch me . . .

From “To Flee the Kingdom”

So spring today, bees in the bok choy

bolted yellow before we could eat it,

let them eat it instead, let them carry on

carrying its stardust from place to place,

let us all eat, come future come. Meanwhile,

the cat takes, gives a good long bath.

The birds—the birds will fill whatever gap

left them. Once we didn’t name them

out of abundance, now we don’t name them

out of respect for their loss, ours. . .

And the last magnificent lines from this Haibun:

Magpie, killdeer, curlew, meadowlark, marsh hawk, common merganser, bald eagle, golden eagle, osprey, crow, raven, swallow, seagull, sandhill crane.

(This isn’t a bucket list, it’s a thank-you note.)