My Mother Died in a Dream

Ace Boggess

As I stood by the concrete ledge
of the hospital’s parking garage,
speaking to someone else’s friends,
I felt nullified as if by combustion,

unmade. I couldn’t move
or express what steps to take.
The ledge must have been symbolic,
the friends of friends my audience

for the joke I played on me,
because my mother wasn’t dead,
not even in my dream
which began with a lie I believed,

ended with a sudden reappearance,
daytime-soapish. Jittery, cold
with sweat, I awoke & swore off
eating sugar before bed.

about the writer

Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.