Patrick Dunn

Imagine waking every day in opulence
Seeing only ungilded spaces in need of gaudy excess
A photonegative emptiness
Too cracked to develop
Not even as interesting as the old canister of film
Mother left behind in the refrigerator
Back when child-mind wanted for cheap candy
And connection

What else went undeveloped?

Imagine staring,
Fixing something of thinning hair
In an ugly priceless mirror
Not noticing the reflection
Of the tower window
Sealed by fear some lifetime ago
Old man, no one
Is climbing the walls

A fear of fear!

Imagine, several times each day,
Eating what others have tested for poison
Others whose jobs you may have already cut
It’s no accident that you feel the heartburn of power
The intense blood pressure
Grasping tightly to the
Sycophantic cyanide pill of a country
In decline

Imagine—

Doing it all the same tomorrow and tomorrow
And tomorrow still
Until death comes
With no repentance, no remorse
No other understanding
No understanding another
No peace but for the grace of your departure
And celebration in your wake

Patrick Dunn is a writer and musician living in Sacramento, CA. He earned his MFA from Stony Brook University and has published pieces in various journals. In addition to writing, he is the executive director of a nonprofit that supports patients with rare autoimmune diseases.

This poem appeared in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.