Dreams

Practicing

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Taking piano lessons, learning to speak Russian, seeking enlightenment

Moon Jellies

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Some nights I dive into the sound / and let the waters have me. / I’ve felt the brush of a jelly arm— / they never really sting. It’s the glimpse / of that phantom-thing gliding beside me.

The Dead of Dream Town

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

As the majority population of Dream Town, the dead hold all elective offices. They determine the hours of the municipal pool. (Midnight swimming!) They program traffic lights to operate on peculiar patterns: Some never turn red. Others never turn green.

The Children's Wing

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Other parents see our little girl running up and down the hall, or performing a dance in the playroom, or climbing onto a stool to get the Funny Bunny game from the closet, and they ask why we are here. I have told the story so many times to so many different doctors that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m keeping the details straight. Was it four in the morning or six? What woke us—the trembling and shaking, or the lack of breathing, or the choking sounds?

Her Mother's Suitcase

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

That night she dreamed about her mother and the darkening spot on her ceiling and the water collecting in a fetid puddle in the middle of her living room carpet.

Considerable Luck

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

In the weeks before my surgery I wandered parks and refuges where black-crowned night herons clung to cattails, pied-billed grebes fished ponds, and raucous crows cawed and flew upwind to find branches where they could shelter together. They would aim for a tree, fail to settle as a flock, then fall back and regroup to try again. Like the crows, I wouldn’t quit.

Selected Poems

sybil.smith7@gmail.com — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I know now, / having woken / and climbed away from you / in the chill / that I can do it. / Cast a spell / on my body.

The Cat Who Woke Me Up

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

Sunbeams

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0400

In the beginning was the beat, and the beat was the rhythm of God, and the rhythm of God became the harmony of humanity.

Clarence Glover

Nectar

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500

It was an old tradition he had once told her about: When there was a death in the household, the beekeeper would go out to tell the bees about it. The thought was that, if the bees were not told, they would abscond. They were members of the family. Their feelings would be hurt if they were overlooked.

So he was doing it. Telling them. Romantic fool.

Penumbra

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

If Roe was created in the liminal space of the penumbra, Dobbs is the total eclipse that makes all go dark.

Don’t Think Too Hard about Avocados

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:10:00 -0500

I swear my brain wasn’t always like this. I used to daydream during church sermons, school lessons, and long bus rides. I may have been a shy, awkward nerd with good grades and bad social skills, but inside I was building worlds, whole continents created from nothing and populated with sprawling cities, brave heroes, and looming threats. These days the continents are barren, the heroes defenseless against spotted produce.

Smoke Memories

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0400

My mother and I were alone the night / our house burned down. I was nine that summer, / and the smell of smoke clung to my clothes. / And after the fire a tree in the yard / grew crooked with scoliosis, its back bending / away from the remains of the house.

Sunbeams

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 -0500

A memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Fifteen Strokes Of Luck

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 04:00:00 -0400

The first was that I was no longer in pain; I could sleep. / The second was that I was finally able to love: all my life I had been more or less shut. / The third was that I lived near a pond. Watching the mallards dunk made me laugh. I was happy looking at dragonflies and even their empty exoskeletons, their shells shaking a little in the wind.

My Mother Is A Peaceful Ghost

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:15:00 -0400

In my dreams my mother keeps walking out of the kitchen singing, / You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. / She never sings past the first verse.

Mark On The Cross

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0500

MARK HOHN, a handwritten sign said. DEC. 19, 2013. 17 YRS. Here’s what struck me like a bus. It happened to be Dec. 19. He’d died exactly two years earlier. I sat on the ground before the cross and told myself to pay attention, that this was no coincidence.

Sleep Study

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:10:00 -0400

I wake at 2:34 AM and lie in bed staring at the ceiling for a couple of hours, beating myself up for having awakened way before it’s time to get up.

Stolen Time

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Blind luck put me on this yard where the men have decided to make good use of the empty time forced upon us by the state. Yard A is downright peaceful, nothing like the prison yards where racist convicts stab and assault people.

Handy Tips On How To Behave At The Death Of The World

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Eschew blandness. Eschew causing others pain. We are all the target so wear bright colors and dance with those you love.

The Other, Invented Man

Sat, 01 Dec 2018 00:05:00 -0500

For many years — the majority of my life, in fact — acknowledging death’s inevitability exerted little psychological pressure on me. I had no fear of passing, as they say, from this world into the next, or, assuming no next world exists, simply entering oblivion.

V.I.P. Tutoring

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:05:00 -0400

For a term paper I demanded a Louis Vuitton purse. For a take-home midterm, a Tiffany bracelet.

Willie

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400

No one in prison is ever coming back. Once we’ve served our time, everything is finally going to work out. We’re all going to stay in touch, so we can share our good news — except I’ve been giving out a fake phone number this entire time. I’m embarrassed to know these men, eyewitnesses to a shameful period of my life I can’t wait to live down: two years in prison for a nonviolent offense.

Sometimes The Dream

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500

My student blushed all over his bald head / as he confessed, laughing, / “I have those adultery dreams — you know, the ones / where you wake up in a cold sweat: / Thank God, thank God, / I didn’t mess up my whole life!”

A Visitation

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0400

It was very kind of my ex-husband, / dead these dozen years, / to show up in my dream last night.

The Same Movies

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:30:00 -0500

He never listens to my dreams. “Dreams / aren’t real,” he says dismissively. And he’d prefer it / if I filled out a rebate for a toothbrush instead of starting another / poem.

April 2015

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 01:00:00 -0400

I’m looking at today’s impossibly long to-do list. To accomplish everything on it will take more than twenty-four hours. To not accomplish everything will leave me ill-prepared to leave town tomorrow.

Selected Poems

Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0400

The Empty Dress

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0400

March sky the color of smoke; / Carla’s red hair blazed, a torch song of hopeless hope / as she powered her wheelchair through the Vintage Fair / to help me find a wedding dress.

April 2013

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Why do I imagine that the way I shape these sentences matters to anyone but me? So what if my writing is published? Hell, I’m the publisher!