Diana (life long friend) and I are in some joint eating, and I have a big bag of stuff to carry out. There are people there who are in the theater or movie business, and I realize at some point that I applied for a job with them years before when I was young...something called "Hot Chicks" ( or something stupidly similar). I never heard back from them. The men we overhear are crude and loud. I have a big bag of stuff to carry, (baggage?) and it is too heavy. Then a guy reminds me that he knows I auditioned for them. I ask Diana if she has moments when things in her memory just disappear. I tell her I think I had a kid. She looks at me funny. I tell I think I gave it to Michele (a friend I no longer talk to) to keep for me, but then I forgot about it.She says No, you gave it to ME. I am shocked. I said where is she? (I seemed to know it was a girl) and she says she gave it to someone named Jo Jackson. A friend of her husband's. Noone I ever heard of. She said Jo was a woman who worked in a drugstore. I asked if Diana had seen the child and she said not often.

We start to leave the place, carrying the bag, going up and down stairs while I am crazed with the thought I have a child out there somewhere who doesn't even know me. The bag gets left somewhere. Diana wants to stop to go to the bathroom. I convince her to wait until we've descended all these stairs. But we wind up in a subway station that is dark and threatening looking. (it's from another dream about me trying to find/get on the right train). Diana has to go and runs into the ladies room and locks the door. I wait aside. And wait and wait. I realize she's not coming out. I am frozen with fear.

I wake up.

##

The Red Car

The daily papers in the back

seat spread atop the old women

come from the sex factory;

their mouths replaced

by labia, the desert beneath

their skirts sewn shut. The

passenger seat is stacked

with old bones, like firewood,

dead children and husbands,

parents and forgotten aunts

gleam like polished ivory

from years of travel. The driver's

foot is on the accelerator.

She leans into the wheel,

eyes squinting in the dimming light;

a tub of toothless smiles,

coy giggles but the car stands

still, waiting, waiting

for the traffic light, three

black moons that hang

above, to change.