MAGGIE SMITH, "PANEL VAN" (ISSUE 14)

PANEL VAN

You know the one about the white panel van,
the one about the dark sedan, the one I told
my daughter this morning,

the one about the man who’s lost and needs
directions, the one about the man who lost
his puppy, the one that goes come here,

I’ll show you a picture of my puppy,
the one that goes he’s so cute, isn’t he,
such a cute little lost puppy.

I told my daughter the one about the not-lost
not-puppy. I redacted the part about what’s lost
being something in the man, something

he thinks a child can help him find, or maybe
he thinks she has it. She doesn’t have it.
I didn’t tell my daughter

the man was once a child. He had a mother
who zipped his tricky winter coat, tamed
his cowlick with her spit-wet thumb,

and how could she have known her son
would search the web for cute puppy
pictures, then roll past a park. This morning

I told my daughter the one about still loving
the world we live in, the world the man
lives in, lost. Yes, the same world.

ABOUT THE POET

Maggie Smith is the author of Weep Up (Tupelo Press, forthcoming 2018); The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison; and Lamp of the Body. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Maggie is a freelance writer and editor, and a consulting editor to the Kenyon Review. MaggieSmithPoet.com

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.