Pleading With an Ibid's Hem (formerly The Golden Bullet), edit 1

[KYPunk]

The dream began as they always do:
familiar dread, unfamiliar place— The feeling precedes the experience of the dream
children with the names I gave them
and ages that make no sense in logical time.
I like the ambiguity in your description. Puts me in the right mindset for the subject. You refer to 'children' here, and then 'men' in the second stanza. Did the children become men, or are these different people entirely?

Men stood in rows like solemn corn,
like a marching band with no routine and no music,
only Paul Ryan's slicked black All-American hair,
navy blue fitted suits, and placid eyes that followed
this break is a little disorienting, since 'placid eyes' is so essential to the next stanza.

the bullet gleaming golden overhead,
the way that kittens fix on a wiggling string.
Their faces showed no fear,
no judgment, no signals of thought,
just a silent ------wow------
and mouths slung open the way they slack
when the mind abandons consciousness.

Why use descriptive language when you could simply state things as what they appear to be? the first stanza already prepares us for the mutable logic of a dream and the rest of the poem seems comfortable referring to dream symbols directly, rather than relating them to other symbols. For example:
and mouths slung open
abandoning consciousness
The next stanza does exactly that, and unpacks neatly.

There was no covenant,
or sign from Yahweh—
no prepared ark.

They never looked down or to the side,
so they didn't see us wash away.
I read this 'us' as being separate from the men, so possibly the viewer and the children mentioned before? I'm presuming you mean Noah's ark, and not the ark of the covenant, considering 'washed away'. The ending feels a little abrupt and unclear. Maybe if you connected it a little more to the previous stanza, which also feels a bit short, you could introduce more clarity. 'no prepared ark' sets up 'washed away' anyway.

Very enjoyable, I like how layered and true to the feeling of a dream it is. Thanks for the read!

Excellent critique, but I've changed all your red text to green.  Could you please not use red in the future?  Here we reserve it for moderator/admin comments and it makes the members nervous   Thanks/ Admin