Sara Jeanine Smith

Instead of grabbing those faraway stars
I didn’t know had names, here I am reaching
for those patches of black in between,
my hands searching them
as though the sky were bottomless water
in which I expected to graze a solid thing
with my swishing, brush someone’s fin I can’t see,
disrupt the swirling sleep of comets.
 
In the negative of a photograph
there is a burning relief,
a searing whiteness,
 
and as such
 
there is something of me
in every white star I have dreamed of,
in every dark place I have dreamed in:
 
how precious is the blackness
pooling around the point
that breaks through it,
 
a gleam waiting to blind.

 

Author Bio

Sara Jeanine Smith was born in central Florida and grew up in the Florida panhandle. She is an assistant professor of English at Pensacola State College and the mother of two daughters. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pigeonholes, Roanoke Review, The Stirling Spoon, Psaltery & Lyre, Hurricane Review, Dying Dahlia Review, and Mothers Always Write. Her chapbook entitled Queen and Stranger was published by USPOCO Books in 2019.​