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Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer living in Lowell, Mass., and who spent part of her childhood in Somerville. In addition to The Somerville Times, her poetry has appeared recently in The Cafe Review, The Lowell Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Bay, Acropolis Review, and many more. She is author of five poetry books and a short fiction collection, The Plague Confessor. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com. 

Hudson Street House

Meg Smith

Descending the steps from the Armory parking lot,
I find my way through shadows
to that nursery of ghosts, bright in their birth from
green walls. They rise to the sound that stalks,
even in dreams: crackling flames, but in fact,
rain clasping the trees and sidewalks.
And in that sleep, I learned:
from bruises, and a broom spiraling from the sky,
a child’s only true witchery
comes from the nearest fallen branch,
to hold close, even in tears of flooding.

Angelus: The Namesake

Let me tell you about Irish lullabies
They are not tones so sweet and low
but the bells of prayer and war
carried over the waters that flow
through Dublin, the city
won back from the enslavers
who built it
and so, as her brother
takes his last breath in
his mouth full of blood,
my mother takes her first
and the cry of a new battle begins.

Dear Joe

You’re wearing your best beard,
white, and thinned like winter hills,
each strand for a child, now grown.
You work lonely hours, but are
still so loved. I’m looking to the
woman asleep in the coffee shop
while it rains. The night moves closer.
I turn away from its darkening light.

 — Meg Smith