Again, the man in the window
wakes from a dream of June bugs:
fragile with heat, they’d thrown
their bodies into trees and split
like skulls. The man said he was
hungry. The sisters still arrive
some evenings with their Bibles
and a roll of toilet paper. Tonight
they’ll bring fruit salad which he
eats slowly, exploring every grape
and melon ball for the tiny spiders
he sees there, drowned in poison
syrup. Or kiss his eyes. He tries
to choose. He knows that it can
hurt, that prayers can burst from
the mouth. Inside is both of us.
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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 