Erin Elizabeth Smith
Mapmaking
There’s a foundation here
beneath the gentle lapping
of the have and have not
of distance. There’s a horizon
of difference.
-Lorna Dee Cervantes
Smoking on the Starbucks patio,
the chicken joint across the street
smells like the state fair fry
of funnel cakes. I am everywhere
today. Not just the American
sameness of chain coffee, but the red
and purple living room where I burrowed
in the blankets of a man I used to love.
A candy cane rocket nested
in the Columbia fairground,
the orange trill of space heaters
outside a Mississippi bar.
Back in Binghamton, where the haughty
hills have doffed their autumn
and the rivers sink
to the barely clothed rock.
Virginia and its impossible blue
in springtime and that long stretch
of 81 that ripples slowly
into Roanoke.
It is almost Thanksgiving
in Knoxville, the one city
I haven’t written yet,
still bookmarking love
in different states, the way
memory spins like an endless bottle
on the pavement of old houses.
I make love in my bed here
with my husband, wearing his orange
like a New England sunset.
And it’s not even Providence
I dream of, though her naked
fiery rivers still delight,
and the hollowed train station
in the leaping heart of that city
is my own mole heart sometimes.
I want to chalk the greys
of Tennessee, the split seasons
tunneling into the tourist shop mountains.
How it’s not exactly cold here
not like Champaign where the fondant
snow iced cars in the street
and four years ago, a different man broke
my poems into grief
and fishbowls of cheap wine.
Here, maybe I can be another woman
free of topography, the memoirs
of places I have loved.
Here, I am ringed, housed,
given to fits of chain-smoking
and surreptitious histories.
Here, my life is Tennessee-long
and impossibly steady,
a boat glancing off the flared
breaks in the lake. Here
I eat the Asheville apples,
galas the size of my laced hands,
and see the limitations of road signs,
the cities where others sleep
in my old bedrooms, where the tossed
seeds of October pumpkins
vine out onto the spring soil.
Here, I poorly fold the glove
compartment maps, watch
with hunger as the grey squirrels
chase themselves
into their trees.
Erin Elizabeth Smith the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles Press 2008) and The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake Press 2011). Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Mid-American, Florida Review, 32 Poems, Zone 3, Gargoyle, Tusculum Review, andCrab Orchard Review. She also teaches a bit of everything in the English Department at the University of Tennessee and serve as the managing editor of Sundress Publications and Stirring. You can find her online at http://www.sundresspublications.com/erin/
Return to July 2014 Edition
There’s a foundation here
beneath the gentle lapping
of the have and have not
of distance. There’s a horizon
of difference.
-Lorna Dee Cervantes
Smoking on the Starbucks patio,
the chicken joint across the street
smells like the state fair fry
of funnel cakes. I am everywhere
today. Not just the American
sameness of chain coffee, but the red
and purple living room where I burrowed
in the blankets of a man I used to love.
A candy cane rocket nested
in the Columbia fairground,
the orange trill of space heaters
outside a Mississippi bar.
Back in Binghamton, where the haughty
hills have doffed their autumn
and the rivers sink
to the barely clothed rock.
Virginia and its impossible blue
in springtime and that long stretch
of 81 that ripples slowly
into Roanoke.
It is almost Thanksgiving
in Knoxville, the one city
I haven’t written yet,
still bookmarking love
in different states, the way
memory spins like an endless bottle
on the pavement of old houses.
I make love in my bed here
with my husband, wearing his orange
like a New England sunset.
And it’s not even Providence
I dream of, though her naked
fiery rivers still delight,
and the hollowed train station
in the leaping heart of that city
is my own mole heart sometimes.
I want to chalk the greys
of Tennessee, the split seasons
tunneling into the tourist shop mountains.
How it’s not exactly cold here
not like Champaign where the fondant
snow iced cars in the street
and four years ago, a different man broke
my poems into grief
and fishbowls of cheap wine.
Here, maybe I can be another woman
free of topography, the memoirs
of places I have loved.
Here, I am ringed, housed,
given to fits of chain-smoking
and surreptitious histories.
Here, my life is Tennessee-long
and impossibly steady,
a boat glancing off the flared
breaks in the lake. Here
I eat the Asheville apples,
galas the size of my laced hands,
and see the limitations of road signs,
the cities where others sleep
in my old bedrooms, where the tossed
seeds of October pumpkins
vine out onto the spring soil.
Here, I poorly fold the glove
compartment maps, watch
with hunger as the grey squirrels
chase themselves
into their trees.
Erin Elizabeth Smith the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles Press 2008) and The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake Press 2011). Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Mid-American, Florida Review, 32 Poems, Zone 3, Gargoyle, Tusculum Review, andCrab Orchard Review. She also teaches a bit of everything in the English Department at the University of Tennessee and serve as the managing editor of Sundress Publications and Stirring. You can find her online at http://www.sundresspublications.com/erin/
Return to July 2014 Edition