WAITING ROOM, by Mark Smith-Soto

Waiting Room
Mark Smith-Soto
Winner of RMR Chapbook Contest


Red Mountain Review
ASFA Creative Writing Dept.
1800 8th Ave. North
Birmingham, AL 35203
$6.00






Costa Rican-American Mark Smith-Soto is Professor of Romance Languages and Director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he edits International Poetry Review. A 2005 winner of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in creative writing, his poetry has appeared in Nimrod, The Sun, Poetry East, Quarterly West, Callaloo, Literary Review, Kenyon Review and many other literary journals. The author of two award winning poetry chapbooks, his first full-length collection, Our Lives Are Rivers was published in 2003 by the University Press of Florida and Any Second Now, by Main Street Rag Press.



Putting Cancer In A Poem

You have to be careful how you do it—
The first line for sure’s no place, even
The second or third might let it spring
Leaks and streak everything beneath. No,
First you need to let the light flap in
From the uncurtained window, catch
The deep breath off the gardenia bloom
Doing the backstroke in its brandy snifter
As the doctor on the phone says what he
Has to say, and your wife and friend wait
With wine glasses and the porch fan on,
Chatting and looking for you to come back
With the hors d’oeuvres, the Vinho Verde,
The poem of your life with its new name.






Three Birds

Why me, why me, why me? The chittering slants
From the red oak shading the screened-in porch;
Figure it, figure it! an answering call, I can’t
Be sure from where above, maybe the birch

We planted the summer we moved in, our
First sweat invested in our first house to own,
Back when we planned the future we live now.
Pretty us, pretty us, pretty us—well, there’s one

Melodious throat out there, silvering a note
I strain to hear again… It won’t repeat.
And I shiver against the October mist that floats
Over the yard. The twilight is growing deeper,

A final Figure it! fades in the late sun.
Only the Why me? fool keeps carrying on.


Fellows


Wounded like me, willing to talk, knowing
What a scarecrow cancer is, how people don’t
Want to linger near that kind of news, including

Friends who mean well, look away, act as if
They can’t hear, humming in their ear, “You’re
Human, human, human, you poor thing,

Did you think you were special or something?”
Like me, who didn’t know I was like him
Until today. So, sure, he’ll meet for coffee, lunch,

Talk on the phone, exchange biopsy stories,
Gleason scores, radiation and the luck
Of early diagnosis, the years of silver lining

We are in for. I glance at his face and it’s
Like a film has been wiped away, the fine
Forehead, the cafe window a tiny rectangle

In the eyes—the pure daylight of a look
That doesn’t need to look away.


A Question or Two


Does God know why he exists? Or does he
wonder, too, somewhere in his winding depth,
just what he is, and how he comes to be
all-mighty Him, exempt from time and death?
Is he that saddest thing, a being who
worships nothing? Or does he worship us
who worship him, the way some fathers do
their helpless sons? Are we each other's cross,
each other's shadow? Does ours stretch over him
as cold and hard? What happens in his heart
when ours cramps? And when our pupils dim,
what eclipses does he glimpse among the stars?
Is our breath his? Our spirit that despairs?
Are we—poor thing!—the answer to his prayers?

Here and There

I am here…What does that mean? These words
I scribble down detach from me, enter a world
Not mine, beyond the time of me: the weight of
What I meant to say, the friends I meant to love,
The heart I wished was mine. Words do their best,
Poor things. They can’t breathe for me. The rest
Really is silence, a silence I am resisting now,
Here, by this window framing purple clover, a bough
Of laurel I meant to trim today, the late light
Of June making the lilies meaningful. And I
Work to spin myself from this, to tell myself, to sing
The sense of me, the life, the soul, to bring
The human of myself—hands, tears, hair—
To you catching these words, not here but there.

Revenant

Tulita’s birthday again, neither mourned
Nor celebrated, too warm for early March
But perfect for champagne in the screened-
In porch, the cardinals making a din as
I evoke her in one of the wrought-iron chairs,
Bubbly flute in hand, eyes distracted away,

Another springtime on her head, long-buried
But again now looking over the back yard, listening
To the birds maybe, or taking in an early
Daffodil along the fence… I watch her watching
And wait for her to turn to us again, but she
Hasn’t done that for many birthdays now.

The rest of us talking and laughing outside
Are all in our fifties, it’s been months since
We could sit out here and listen to neighbors
Behind hedges, dogs howling, the rustle
Of nest-making in the hollies. My Tulita,
Who fought the years off like mosquitoes,

Tinted her hair and drew on perfect eyebrows,
Now leans back against the metal leaves and roses
Of the metal chair chilly with the afternoon
And accepts the long shadows on the lawn, listens
To birds a hundred years away, inhabits
Her corner space without a murmur, looking back

Over a lifetime of birthdays webbed in memories
Not sharable with the living, her lifetime of small joys
Held secretly apart while we try to share ours
Near her, refilling our glasses and shaking
Our heads over another winter gone, another
Perfect afternoon subtracted from our store.