The Hubcap House: red tinsel grass, a wall
of flyers reading “See the world’s first house
made up of hubcaps, more than you can count!”
Fresh off the Tilt-a-Whirl and on a whim
she asks how many, and the barker says
there’s half a million make the roof alone.
He keeps her quarters in a velcro pouch.
She’s shaking. If this is a dream of death
then why is it in color? Look: his teeth
are burning red, the tinsel rose he picks
from her back pocket flares red and is gone.
He lifts her veil of gauze. He bends to take
her fingers, and she ducks and turns away
and starts the treacherous climb back to earth.
Originally published in Crazyhorse
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About Todd Smith
Born and raised in rural west-central Illinois, Todd Smith studied poetry, music, and math at the University of Virginia, and received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, River Styx, North American Review, Barrow Street, Palette Poetry, Meridian, Barren Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He received Frontier Poetry’s 2017 Award for New Poets, and was a semi-finalist in the 2018 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. A valuation actuary by profession, he lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
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Todd Smith 