winterSmith :: Ten Quick Poems ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: winterSmith (aka Sam) was born in and grew up in North Carolina. Then he moved away. Then moved back. Then away. Then back. Away again, and finally back, this time for good. Probably.


Civil War
Isaiah says the angels fell
out of love.

The sky never healed.
Over the city

it rained feathers, black
and white, for a thousand years.


Cold Season
October buttoned up his scarecoat.
November crowned the house with smoke.
December painted black days white.

Come January, ringnecks froze in place.
All was still ’til April
flumed our melted songs to the sea.


Glissade
Trees hold their breath
beneath a star-bright sky.

Fireflies ricochet around the yard.
Grainwives slip beneath the fence,
lug their shadows toward the barn.


Swing remembers a child.
Piano wire dangles from the moon.


Quantum Bleed
Other Alice
through cracked glass.

Slow to wave back.


Dolly
Daddy breaks things to see how they work.
Mommy looks at her stories.

Batting, buttons, and bone.


Person of Interest
Chalk outline of a poet,
your name
trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Detectives round up the usual suspects.
Your fingerprints are all over the place.
The neighbors heard a scream.


Esmé Wonders How She’ll Die
Burlap ingénue:
two lines and a dying scene.

I shot the boy whose piano
chanted in the monastery of rain.

I shot the boy who played the
organ as Vaudeville died.

I shot the girl with the butterfly engine:
hand-crank angel
wedged in the headlights,

oxide smile, forgotten like a coal town.


Icarus (A Small Self-Portrait)
Dandelions think they’re bluebells.
Moths believe they’re butterflies.
No one told them, or
they wouldn’t listen.

What if I’m mistaken,
begoggled, peddling
DaVinci’s madman machine
toward high noon?


Grieve
Animal by the road is us.
Horses sleep beneath tin roofs.
This is where we lay us down.


Witness
Doorknob, dent and tarnish,
cold like a river stone.
Yellowing window light.
Daguerreotype:
Woman buttoned to the throat.

Me screaming for the ambulance to hurry.
She wants me to find God.


Black Mary (This Woman I Have Always Known)
In from her tramp through the woods.
Knocks the last clump of
daylight from her boots.
Sets them inside the door.