Maggie Smith

Dear buzzard

nesting in the abandoned trailer
across the holler from my house,
 
dear buzzard teetering on air  
just above my house,
 
you remind me of me
in a photograph, circa 1983,
 
my face floating in profile
just above my body.
 
Dear death omen,
holler squatter, scavenger, spy,
 
if you’re watching, waiting for me
to die, I’ve got that covered.
 
I’ve hovered in silhouette
just above myself
 
since my Olan Mills girlhood,
a shoulder-devil, a shoulder-haunt.
 
Dear buzzard, you can fly
your ragged black flags.
 
Leave the watch to the faded
ghost of me. Out of body,
 
just above me, she doesn’t age.
Her eyes never close.

---

Not-Elegy for the Midwest

We’re lying on our backs in a field,
yes, but we’re breathing. We’re lying
 
on our backs in the timothy grass,
watching the trees breathe overhead,
 
tracing the stars into lions and spoons.
We’re matting our own shapes
 
into the tall sweetness, our clothes
folded on large, flat rocks
 
until we need them again.
If you want to find us, you’ll find us
 
lying in a field, deviling the dark.
You’ll hear us breathing. If you try
 
to bury us, know our eyes are open,
our mouths are open, and no,
 
we’re not afraid to taste the warm,
dark metallic of where we were grown.

---

Little A

The neighborhood a cake frosted white
and my son and I sunblind in the snow,
 
waving to the shadow of us holding hands.
The seams where our hands touch.
 
The seams where our shadows attach
to our bodies. The seams between
 
the chalked ball and stick of each little a
I remember my first teacher printing
 
on the blackboard. How they touched--
no space between them, no overlap.
 
My family’s in flooring. I know how
hard it is to hide the place where
 
pieces meet. Ball and stick. My son and I
standing hand in hand, one gray shape
 
on the snowy hill in front of our house.




--
Maggie Smith is the author of three books of poetry: Weep Up, forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2018; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison; and Lamp of the Body. She is also the author of three prizewinning chapbooks. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.