The rented A-frame off Casco Bay
has one-and-a-half baths and a mute
handyman she hired in May. It’s
December: his left eye clouded
up around Thanksgiving, and now
its stiffening blue makes her think
of the boreal winter she survived
in Saskatchewan, the night her best
Guernsey fell through the ice.
How
she loathes carolers, their hairless
chins, the stench of sacred hymns
and condescension and probably gin
as the little ones lob snowballs at her
window, heralds of joy she feels hit
from high in the attic. Novel idea,
but she knows she’s already chosen:
below her in the snow-black house
the man stirs, howls, begins to sing.
Originally published in Poet Lore
Like this:
Like Loading...
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.
View all posts by Todd Smith →
Todd Smith 