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

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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.