Sally Weston Ziph

SUSAN SMITH'S DREAM

The blue van rises
from the bottom of the lake

tilts on its side and floats
back to the dock. Water pours

out of its windows, forming
pockets of air that release the screams

of her small sons strapped
into car seats. Walking backward,

she turns to see the van heave
itself up onto the dock’s edge,

rolling toward her, slowly,
backwards, water

smoothing into surface,
under the moon’s white eye.


Sally's YouTube video reading of "Susan Smith's Dream":



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Sally confesses: "I remember hearing about the Susan Smith case in the summer of 1994 after reading Joyce Carol Oates' Chappaquiddick book, Black Water. That book really made me think about the horror of death by drowning, and the fact that Susan Smith drowned her two baby sons (and blamed it on a non-existent Black bogey-man), all because she wanted to get together with the town's rich boy, is truly the stuff of nightmares."

SALLY WESTON ZIPH's poems and short stories have appeared in The Five-Two, Bear River Review, Third Wednesday, Rat's Ass Review, and others. She is a University of Michigan Hopwood Award winner, and recently received her MFA degree from Miami University's low-res program, where she was a first runner up for the 2020 Miami American Academy of Poets Prize judged by poet Stephanie Young. She works as a librarian at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.