Two Poems: Kathryn Smith
Consider Who you are and who you have been and what you have known. Who you’ve loved and how. How to trap a thing and kill, and how light might stain a morning. Consider the self. Be good to the self. Consider the ways you haven’t been. Make a list of all the times you’ve been asked to justify your existence. Some kind of flower. Some kind of grub-rooting animal. Some kind of grub. As though these things are lesser. Consider the beasts of the field, etc. Consider the words “I’m sorry.” What does this mean. Someone has been cruel to you. You have been cruel to someone. To yourself. Make a list of the times you’ve asked yourself to justify your existence. What are you. A tenacity of leaves. A crust of salt. A violence of acorns. From the day I was born, I was damage. I am half in love with half the people I know. I want to be free of shame. I want to love you on a streetcorner, beside a tree growing from parking lot concrete. I want to love that improbably. This is my favorite kind of opening. Like a wound. The sun in its smoke-red burning. Sunflowers with petals growing from the centers. How they look like mistakes.
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What the poem needs The poem needs an accent mark. The poem needs a bark beetle. The poem needs the weight of grief behind it. The poem needs a U-Haul full of feelings. The poem needs a dredged-up memory, a “What do I know?,” a lack. The poem needs animals that sing and animals that mourn and animals that are far more capable than humans of being themselves. The poem needs to be itself. The poem needs animals that graze and animals that kill and animals that scavenge through what other animals leave behind. The poem needs animals. What I’m saying is. The poem needs an insect and a metaphor and a piece of wind-blown trash. Needs a rusted hasp. The poem needs an ending. The poem needs to say something other than “I love you” and “I am afraid.” The poem needs a door and a Dickinson reference and a slant rhyme. The poem needs to ruminate on the symmetry of microscopic beings without being ruined by the white European male gaze. The poem needs ruin. The poem needs to fume and fumigate. The poem needs to spray sewage water on a field of grass and the poem needs red-winged blackbirds to deafen the ditch surrounding the field. That kind of stench. What I’m saying is. The poem needs dusk. The poem needs evening and morning, the third day. The poem needs to be free of the tyranny of myth. The poem needs pith and rind and the bitter between. The poem needs a spleen. The poem needs a therapist. The poem needs an ending.