The List of Dangers

Maggie Smith

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781612779966
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Tight and purposeful as a fable, The List of Dangers gives us sorrows and warnings from a world imbalanced by beasts and little beauties. The images are precise as a child's playroom-keyholes, miniature candelabra, the 'trebly notes' of wrens and gypsies- but perilous in their tender transformations. Maggie Smith's rich lyric gifts produce here a poetry of balancing composure in the face of peril and pretty chance."-David Baker, author of Midwest Eclogue "In Maggie Smith's The List of Dangers, as in the Brothers Grimm, we learn early how hazardous life is and how eagerly our fate awaits us. In these inventive new poems, Smith borrows elements from folktales, fairy tales, and fables to remind us once again that 'Nothing stays good for long' and 'No one [is] preserved.' And just as before, we're thrilled by each tale and tickled to death at our own imperilment."-Kathy Fagan, author of Lip

APOLOGUE (1)

En la tierra del olvido, donde de nada nadie se acuerda …

In the land where all is forgotten, where no one remembers anything,

birds cut off their beaks to share your sorrow, Little Torn Shoe.

Twice of half a moon throbbed, swollen. I don’t know what

you mourned. This tale was lost among the chestnut trees,

where I found it and brought it to you. Little Bird of Many Colors,

you are the kind who confuses wondering with wandering.

You wonder around. Under your braids, a bright light.

Little Pink Apple, life does not taste as good as it should.

After all, there is always something better. We choose the best

of what is before us, but much is not before us. In the story,

a boy chose the horse called Thought over the one called Wind.

Thinking swiftly, he rode to you. His sack of apples turned

to a sack of rats; his sack of pears to parrots repeating

happy, happy, happy … Little Gold Pin, many things we tell

our children are kind but not true. The reverse is also true.

You were crying in the chestnut trees. There was no telling

the leaves from the leaf-shaped spaces between them.

I don’t know what you mourned, Little Winter Deer, the birds

mute and bleeding all around you. I know you want to forget

that last part. And here a cup got broken. Everyone should now go home.

VANISHING POINT

When she leaves the path, the forest opens for her

like a picture book minus the story in which

she has a deer for a brother and braids him a leash

out of flowers. It’s no way to live. The girl does not know

wickedness when she sees it. What is she doing alone?

Gathering nosegays? Using her mother’s disregard

to hack through the brambles? She measures her distance

in lines: a sonnet for every fourteen steps down

a long hall of yellow leaves. They smell bitter as aspirin.

In the nearly invisible rain, they twitch as if tugged

by clear wires. Wha...