Marcus Smith Poetry Poems

When I catch you
(says the mother to her son)

You won't catch me
...

spelled with stones on the slope of a teenager's hill,
tagged along rainy highway sound barriers,
scrawled on an overpass of the M something,
stenciled in Arial across the side of a moving van,
...

Up here transparent turquoise fish with red stripes,
silver minnows - thousands - brilliant yellows
and greens and showers of gold ashimmer through
meadows of soft, pulsing mauve coral fans
...

Inspectors at Dover discovered us
Slumped behind crates of tomatoes,
Suffocated in the airtight freight-hold
On the hottest weekend of the year.
...

Bring your boots. My cabin stands in an empty filed
That once grew sweet corn, and our dry winter promises
A rainy season the way laughter follows a grim joke.
We'll walk the mud and try to ignore the surrounding acres
...

One shoe lying in the street.
Two tossed on the crosswalk.
More shoes leading to the bridge.
A path, a pattern, a confetti
...

Connected

The buzz, the vibration -
Who? Now? Why? Must.
...

I knew. For years he kept the curtains closed
and paper-clipped together, stayed inside
slumped in a reclining chair, fingering papers,
ringing a small brass bell each time for pills
...