<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dad dreams about the walk-in cooler, holy \nand secret its open cans of cherries, whole \nboxes of loose chocolate chips. Always \nmore vivid than mine, he sees every detail \nof the bakery in \u201953. See that picture? That\u2019s all of us \nthere<\/em>, says his peg-legged grandfather, pointing \nto a wall calendar\u2013Baroque Cossacks fording a river. \nThat\u2019s your Dad, that\u2019s Harold and John Pristacz, and the one \nwith the biggest sword is me<\/em>. Dad studied their faces, \ntheir billowing mustaches for the rest of the year. \n\nHe remembers the shop, its work table rubbed \nsmooth, splinterless from thirty years of use. \nOne oven is set in the wall - black metal poured \nwith the building at the turn of the century. \nThe other looks like an art deco locomotive. They both open \nfor offerings of loaves, mouths ten feet deep and fiery. \nAgainst the wall are the mixers, tall as grown men, revolving \nbowls the size of armchairs. When he was six, \nDad dreamed his grandmother fell in naked and rolled \necstatic in the wet dough, her mouth a perfect circle.\n\n<\/pre>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\n
\n <\/p>\nDream Home<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always around the corner. Last night\nI left Chris\u2019 house \u2013 which doesn\u2019t exist \u2013 turned right \nand there it was, larger than I remember. It always is \nsomehow. Presumably my mother and father were inside \nworking on a meal or maybe watching a movie, but I woke up \nbefore I could see. Other times it\u2019s been less itself.\nOnce, my parents had renovated it beyond recognition,\nskylights and open concept rooms. I didn\u2019t care.\nI was happy they had somewhere familiar to grow old.\nI like going to sleep now. How wonderful to see\nall the different ways emptiness can fold itself.\n\n\f\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\n
\nErich Slimak is a singer, amateur basketball historian, and fifth-generation New Yorker, where he lives with his partner. He received his MFA in Poetry Writing from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he served as Assistant Poetry Editor of NINTH LETTER<\/em>. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, I-70 Review, The Pinch,<\/em> and elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dream Home | Dream Home<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}