A Room Like This

by Maggie Smith

My friend Maggie Smith is the author of four books, most recently Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017) and the forthcoming Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Simon & Schuster, 2020). Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Poetry, The Believer, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Paris Review. A freelance writer and editor, Smith is on the poetry faculty of Spalding University’s MFA program and serves as an Editor at Large for the Kenyon Review. This is her debut in The Experiment, a statement of truth that nevertheless explores new limits in absurdity. I am grateful for her contribution and hold her dear. —JS

I remember best your wild

black hair—how, newborn, 

you even had sideburns, even 

little lashes on your forehead, 

your shoulders. Your round face 

a red moon, the kind of warning 

sailors know well. I remember 

also your low, gruff cry. Bear cub, 

you were a growling creature

all your own, not of my body

the way they’d told me 

you would be, not an organ 

removed, transplanted into air 

and fluorescence. I feel

about birth the way I feel 

about death: it should not happen 

in a room like this, or any room. 

I want the smell of soil or salt air, 

dark pines, fire and hot stones. 

Something elemental. 

You should look up and see 

not ceiling, at least not 

first or last on this earth. 

I began this poem thinking 

of you, who turned seven 

just two days ago, and now 

I’m thinking I don’t want to die

in a room. It is like my life,

this poem. All this time, 

child, I’ve had no idea

where it’s going.