is on the faculty at Bowling Green State University, where she is editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review and advisor of Prairie Margins. Cloud holds an MFA from BGSU and a BA from Michigan State University. Her poems have appeared widely in journals such as Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, The Gettysburg Review, and American Poetry Review.
Sleep Paralysis Demon
1 Minute Read Time
Not a white night, pearls threaded
eyelid-deep. This gambit is lead, a horn
that wakes the sleeper, not the bones.
Coal-weight on the lungs: no great
cat, salt-red eyes in the black, no boy-
child gathered in as sandbag. The earth
has stopped its turning. Time leers
from the clock. Nothing but air fills
this chest, poisons these limbs. To end
is to look back into the underworld:
Unstring the nerves. Accept
the thick dark.
Read more from Issue 17.2.
