Sometimes 'dream poems' give an account of the strange revelations of our subconscious, and sometimes, like here, the 'dream poem' is the poem of wishes and hope, expressing a fantasy of a certain longing. AD Lauren-Abunassar’s poem, 'Dream in Which My Body Is a Snow Storm', imagines a world in which the “bad” outcomes are upended by a kind of magical hope; and here we have a lesson in the innocent pleasure of wishing for the good by the force of imagining.

 

DREAM IN WHICH MY BODY IS A SNOW STORM

by AD Lauren-Abunassar

 

and doesn’t make anyone cold. If I fell I would fall

in state-shaped flakes. One for every place my body

lingered. One for every little bit of light I stole

and kept. No cars startless. No tangled up roadways. Neck

becoming mountain of drift; foot becoming fierce kicking

eddies. Heat would not melt me. Hands would not help

me undo. Blanketing softly. Whimsy not pretend.

Dream in which my body is a snowstorm and the storm says

a purpose in falling.

 

American Life in Poetry is made possible by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2020 by AD Lauren-Abunassar, 'Dream in Which My Body Is a Snow Storm' from Nimrod International Journal, Fall/Winter, 2020. Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2021 by the Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Kwame Dawes, is George W. Holmes Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska