Mark Smith-Soto
Mark Smith-Soto is the author of the poetry collections Time Pieces and Any Second Now. He teaches in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Accent
Fifty years ago my older brother brought home / the first tape recorder I’d ever seen, a little box / that pulled my voice out of the air and spun it back / transformed, whiny, stuffed-nose, singsong.
April 2019Selected Poems
— from “Wanting” | Wanting’s the thing, not the thing itself. / The thing itself no longer calls to me
January 2017Twilight Meditation Without Dog
Late-afternoon light floods the darkening sunroom. / Looking out the window, not sad, not happy, I / and the ghost of my old dog breathe in, breathe out
October 2013Getting Ready
You know where you start, but you don’t know where / you’ll end up, so never begin a trip on an empty stomach, / my uncle Enrique said, pulling into the brand-new / Wendy’s, the first in Costa Rica.
April 2012Incontinence
The stain ran a trail down his pleated / Cords, but I didn’t quite register the fact, / And only later realized that it meant / He’d pissed himself.
June 2011New Year
Icy rain and wind outside; inside, my back’s / To the bedraggled human shape asprawl / On the comfy corner sofa at the Starbucks
January 2010
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