UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/TIM TOMLINSON


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY

TIM TOMLINSON

Waking

I find myself waking heavily these
mornings, my dreams like the shame of a
hangover. I did something wrong, or
didn’t but wanted to. Wanted to

very much. My wife is snoring. In the
kitchen I cut up the materials
for today’s shake: mango, papaya,
pineapple. They feel like the materials

of a dream I gave up on. Less than real.
Better. I will blend them into the fuel
of a day that will present me with as

many wrong options as my dreams. One day
I will take one, or two. Maybe then the
dreams will stop. Maybe then I’ll wake lightly.

Tim Tomlinson is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He is the fiction editor of the webzine Ducts. Recent fiction and poetry appear in Perigee, Pif, Del Sol Review, Dogzplot, 3:AM, Hanging Moss Journal, Heroin Love Songs, The Toronto Quarterly, The Smoking Poet, and Tongues of the Ocean.