Poetry January 2010 | issue 409

New Year

by Mark Smith-Soto

MARK SMITH-SOTO is the director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the longtime editor of International Poetry Review. His most recent book of poetry is Any Second Now, and he translated Fever Season: Selected Poetry of Ana Istarú.

Also by this author:
Slide
Time Out

All selections by this author

Icy rain and wind outside; inside, my back’s
To the bedraggled human shape asprawl
On the comfy corner sofa at the Starbucks,
Invisibly fenced from the rest of us by swells
Of back-alley scent. The glass door reflects
A knit cap pulled low over the face, chin
Buried in bulky red. I can only guess the leg
That catches my peripheral vision is a man’s,
Bulgy calf exposed — no way to quite make out
The tattoo stretching along the patchy skin,
A blue range of mountains maybe, flock
Of seabird wings, with just a touch of sun —
Yes, sun, I don’t think I’m imagining it —
Rising from the folds of a gray sock.