The Dream

The mother
threw her baby

from the cliff,
after licking her

to bind them
body to body.

The baby’s cries
pierced her chest

and a stain blossomed there
reminding her

of crushed blackberries
warm in summer sun.

Patrice Boyer Claeys revved up her creative writing at Northwestern University after years in publishing and PR. Her training at the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio led to membership in Plumb Line Poets, of Evanston, Illinois. She is completing her family narrative, “Lovely Daughter of the Shattering,” and hopes to see it in book form soon. Her work has appeared in such publications as Light – A Journal of Photography and Poetry, Beech Street Review, and Bird’s Thumb, and is forthcoming in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters and Postcard Poems and Prose. She reads for the Mom Egg Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net.