Embedded Files
Swear on Your Life
My ex-husband’s new lovers
ping me from orbit: Do you think
he has a pattern? As if
I’d wish to assess his repetitions
with them. As if I could describe
to a thumbnail that he held
my hand as a surgeon sliced open
my abdomen and yanked
his baby from me. How much
blood was behind the blue
curtain? When my son
is not with me, I feel his small hand
in mine like a pulse. A shadow
can be cast, sure, but it can also
be cooling. Like a cloak
made of silk. Like a pelt
made of river. What haven’t
I done wrong? I haven’t
the time to discuss. Make haste
not waste. Make love and
simultaneous war and all
will be fair. My right cheek
is red-hot from grief. I soothe it
against aphorism’s marble wall:
Keep your enemies closer. Love
the sinner. I slam my face against
his hand so he will feel less
ashamed. Whose
pattern? I’m no longer interested
in terminology. I tell a friend
I can’t be a woman
who calls the cops
twice. She says the word Brute,
but we are outside, in the park,
children’s laughter obscuring
her voice – the crack
in her voice – so I think she has said
You. I know brute. I know
force. I gaze off into the green park, seek
my son’s head among
the strangers. Everyone says
We will take care of you now
but no one moves in. No one
gets up in the night
to pee, apologizing – softly –
for waking me. Instead
of getting down on one
knee, he shredded
his dress shirt and bared
his pink chest and stopped
his own heart
instantly. There’s a reason
we say promises
are things we keep.
At the Georgia Aquarium with a Fever of 104
We didn’t know
it was our last summer
wed. Our son was still
small enough to roll
through the dense crowd
in his stroller. It seemed
my forehead might melt
the thick glass from
a distance. What
then? All that saltwater
pulsing over the spectators,
over the spectacular
Jimmy Buffett
vendors, beached hammerhead
flopping on the carpet,
too big and slippery
for any of us
to lift – even if we locked
our wrists – back into his watery
cage? To be this ill
is to be confused.
My son asked Is that
an octopus? while staring
at a squid and I
wondered which lies
mattered the most, how sick
I’d have to get
to be forgiven.
Animals
“Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire.”
– Frank O’Hara
At dinner, Boris tells me
Frank was lying in the sand
when he died. I don’t know why
I always imagined him standing,
confronting the dune buggy
like a war tank. Boris considers me. I tell him a story
about a beautiful woman
I once met at a dinner. In this life, we are always
going to dinner. I tell Boris
how a single tear slid
from the beautiful woman’s beautiful eye – the result
of her effort to control a sneeze. She was a titan of feminine
industry. For Boris, I describe the lake of her face. I take him
there with me. I will never
see him again. My ex-husband
speeds across the Plains, toward
the candlelit corner where I sit
with Boris. My ex-husband wants to know how I look
at Boris, how I think about Frank, the shape of my mouth
when I retell my version of the story. He wants me
to control my own output. I weep
from the effort of halting my body’s
natural processes. I wonder – Who is sitting somewhere, describing me?
Who uses my tragedies
as subtle but expedient seduction? Another Frank – Stanford – shot himself in the heart
three times. I wonder – at the industry required
to pull, and pull, and pull. Boris reminds me that C.D. was there
when that Frank died. It is pleasant to know
so many of the same things, to shape
a new lexicon in which to share them, to use death
as a reminder to sustain
eye contact. My ex-husband is driving
his dune buggy to this dinner. His foot
is a corpse on the pedal. He waves
his wet gun around like a rainbow. If I told Boris how close to death
I keep coming, he’d want to see me again, as dead women cannot
generate new consequences.
I would be happy to show up
with an apple in my mouth. I would be happy
to be the best of my own days. Boris pours
another red glass. Summer slows down around us.
The leaves are more beautiful, coquettish
in their death. Boris’s ears perk
at the sound of my ex-husband’s engine
revving. Did you hear that, he says, and I nod. I don’t lie
to temporary lovers, at least not with any
objective. I tell Boris a story about harmonicas, about jujubes,
about aspirins – plural – and he grins
because he knows this one, too.
Are we standing up or lying in the hot sand?
Will our faces ever, together, know sunlight?
Stay with me until my ex-husband arrives.
Stay with me until the red leaves die.
Boris, your face is so warm and unfamiliar. Your mouth
is a ghost, driven over. Show me your heart
with its cross-stitch of tire tracks. Tell me
one last story I already know.
Jess Smith is the author of Lady Smith (University of Akron Press, 2025). Originally from Georgia, she is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice at Texas Tech University, where she also directs the MFA in creative writing. Her poetry, essays, and criticism can be found in Prairie Schooner, Waxwing, 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. See more at www.jesselizabethsmith.com
Copyright © 2025 by Jess Smith, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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