In my dream, I shared a West Virginia prison cell with Martha Stewart. Despite her fame, there was a sort of easy intimacy between us, with Martha trailing her legs across mine as we whispered about our lives, sharing fears about prison and aspirations for when we were released. At night the warden would open the whole block and send us out into the woods, hunting a species of large cat for which Martha had developed a real taste. The other inmates would howl her name while she bagged one after another, spearing them in what became her trademark, low-to-the-ground stance. At dawn, she lead cooking tutorials with whatever remained. Martha tried to act professional, up there behind her televised jail house kitchen, but we both would giggle whenever we made eye contact, recalling some embarrassing story from school shared beneath the covers at night. Insider trading didn’t factor into the dream.

Dreams haunted by this scene from Anne, Paal Helge-Haugen’s 1968 punktroman: a novel composed of ”points.” Translation mine.

32 In a cove, four men with bare backs
and black trousers crouch in the sand.
I see a white body in the water. His arms,
hips in green water, gliding
like a small fish out there.
The water is moved by a sudden wind.
Their voices near me.

Bjarne read the original Norwegian aloud to a small room of Danes on the third floor, overlooking George Square. A white, milky scar traverses his right eye, verifying rumors of a stint playing Russian villains in the ‘70s.