by Ace Boggess
I dreamt my old boss into being.
Twenty years invisible, & here she came,
her unimpassioned face, stone jaw,
tone flat as if mediating some dispute.
She approached, said something I don’t recall
that wouldn’t have been cruel but left me
wanting to punch the nearest wall
in my dream. I awoke angry, frustrated,
remembering. How does the subconscious work?
Why do I conjure the past like summoning spirits?
Why her? She’s not the boss despised back then,
like me another passenger riding the Misery Line.
I should release her from my buried cage.
Maybe that’s the point: to make me better
by lessening the rage weight. It can be a burden.
It squawks a warrior’s yawp in times of peace.
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 fourth poetry collection, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. 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.