Alexandra Strnad

---

---

Chimera

I woke from another dream,
not the sort
I’d like to talk about,
sleep is an inventor
of the inane and the despicable:
                    there’s a taverna,
where we always sit,
poised for separation,
unsmiling, touching feet,
           and a Dutch gable house
where your shy mother lives
baking her tarte aux pommes
                    and the place where
I try my luck,
day, after night, after day

and there
I’ve grown a village, a bandstand,
a river, a summer palace
with a folly and whispering fountain,
like the Mughal emperor
building his dead love’s
mausoleum, preserving
the moment I first
saw, what it was in you, that
would hold me riveted,
                                   like jealousy.

---

---

---

---

ALEXANDRA STRNAD read English at Cambridge, and Creative Writing at Oxford. Her work includes the pamphlets H is for Hadeda (Poetry Salzburg) and Pilgrims (Eyewear). Winner of the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2014, her debut collection is to be published by Eyewear 2021.

---