Rise Up Review
HomeArchiveFound/ErasedAboutHow to SubmitSupporting the Cause



            Small Shoes


            If there are fewer stars now 
            than when I was a child,

            I can’t say 
            which are missing,
            who was the last to see them.

            Is it not a crime 
            unless we call it a crime?

            It is difficult to document
            a disappearance,
            a boat full of stars

            capsized.
            Stars lying in the sand

            face-down, 
            wearing small shoes. 
            Add that to the report:

            some of the stars washed up
            in small shoes.

                        —Maggie Smith



                                                                                                                                                                                                              @riseupreview 2017


Maggie Smith is the author of The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and three chapbooks. In 2016 her poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally, was translated into nearly a dozen languages, and was called “the official poem of 2016” by the BBC/PRI. She’s received grants from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Weep Up, her third book, will be published by Tupelo Press in September 2017.