Dana Says All Poems Have a Volta, Even Haiku
BY MAGGIE SMITH
I’m on a panel with the poets, ten of us
on stage, water bottles at our feet because
branding ruins photographs, we’re told.
We have four mics to share between us,
and when I pull one toward me, my voice
fills the room, and then I push the mic
toward Adrian, take a drink, hide my water
under the table, and listen. I’m listening
to the poets answer questions about revision
and form and the volta—yes, Dana says,
all poems have one, that moment when
everything changes—
and the whole time I’m thinking
of your hands on me.
Now They’re Saying Isolation Atrophies the Brain
BY MAGGIE SMITH
Talking to yourself in an empty room
sometimes feels like prayer but isn’t.
It isn’t prayer if you’re not asking
for anything, and what would you ask for?
Any request more specific than save me
would be so granular as to be worthless.
It can’t be prayer if you’re standing
at your kitchen counter, wearing an apron
and a far-off look. It can’t be prayer
if you’re walking in your neighborhood,
muttering to yourself, while Orion
keeps buckling and unbuckling his belt
over the houses. It can’t be prayer if you have
the expectation of privacy. If you think
no one’s listening. As a child I believed
so fiercely in the power of my own mind,
when I thought apple, I half-expected
a real one, large and red, to appear
in my hand. Now I know better. I talk
to myself. Sometimes I even answer.
You Ask Me If I Believe in the Afterlife
BY MAGGIE SMITH
I don’t. But what if I’m wrong, you say.
What if there’s something else. What if
there’s not one but multiple heavens.
What if each of us goes into our own dream.
What would I want the afterlife to be,
if I’m wrong. That’s easy: I’d think any song
and it would start playing inside me.
Then another, and another, and another.
I’d be sitting under a tree, sunlight filtering
down through the leaves, ringing against my skin.
On second thought, I can’t imagine why
I’d have skin in the afterlife. What a relief,
the idea of continuing beyond the body.
Outgrowing it, like a childhood dress.
If I’m wrong, I say, I’d want to be
a sun-dappled stereo. My own mind
playing song after song, a hell of a score.
