Let's see
if the burning
outlasts the candle.
By an invisible rope
I am hanged
from the clouds.
Egg, tadpole, frog—
then what the frog becomes.
Having failed in such attempts as I've made,
having so far failed to make the attempt,
or not having been apprised until just recently
that the attempt could in fact be made,
I nonetheless from this day onward and ever after
abdicate from my place in line for, and renounce,
further servings at the voluminous and double
X-chromosomed buffet of flesh.
My books include the collection Settling for Beauty (Cherry Grove Collections, www.cherry-grove.com/smith.html), my first collection, The Hypothetical Landscape (Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series), and the edited anthology Northern Music: Poems About and Inspired by Glenn Gould (John Gordon Burke, Publisher). My children's book The Best Mariachi in the World is forthcoming from Raven Tree Press ( www.raventreepress.com) in 2008. My essays have received three Pushcart nominations, and my essays and reviews have appeared in American Book Review and Pleiades, and my commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times. I am presently circulating a third collection of poems and writing essays.