roanoke
review
lower review
side frame
home
history
submission guidlines
visiting writers
subscribe
bottom frame

For weeks, the dreams called you
my husband. I hadn't the heart

to correct them. Besides, dreams
are often confused, anachronistic,

analog to nothing. One minute,
we're the way we are. The next,

as in the dream where you fell
shaking and sweating into diabetic

shock, everything goes to hell.
(When I tried to dial an ambulance,

the numbers all turned to nines
and ones.) If dreams are transmitted

from a place where we've already
happened and failed, then miracle,

another form of imagination,
has its limits. One minute: water,

the acceptance of impossibility.
The next: wine, the dreams all but

calling me wife or widow, the moon
soft and white as a wedding mint.

Maggie Smith's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Two Rivers Review, Phoebe, Many Mountains Moving, and other journals. Among her recent honors are a Pushcart Prize nomination, an Academy of American Poets Award, and First Prize in Mid- American Review's 2002 Fineline Competition.

home | history | submission guidelines | visiting writers | subscribe | previous issues | links