Michael Dwayne Smith
Michael Dwayne Smith haunts many literary houses, including Bending Genres, The Cortland Review, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Heavy Feather Review, Book of Matches, Monkeybicycle, and Chiron Review. His poetry collection, Shaking Music from the Angry Air is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. He’s a recipient of the Hinderaker Poetry Prize, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and several Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominations. He lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family, rescued horses, and Calamity the California Calico cat.
What Arrives in the Dark
As a young boy, gazing at the reservoir and the stars from out
a backseat car window, close to midnight, floating on air atop
Arrow Highway east, and it’s funny, that feeling, in concert
with a tinny radio station Mom had playing, her singing along,
tire treads syncopated with road, a feeling bigger, more at ease,
a tight fit with the universe, an understanding too full, richer
than I could say or scribble then. The blankets of home. Older,
it was rain that fell at my sister’s funeral. The near-dying in that
New Orleans hotel room. And what about those waving, sunlit
fields you feel when you realize: Holy crap, this really is love!
Or blues that send you driving for no reason to Santa Fe, after
she gives you up for good. When I was ten years old, wondering
at Auriga in a car window on nights returning from Grandma’s
house, sometimes I asked why Mom was never in a hurry to
get back to Dad. Of course, the truth would burn soon enough.
Of course, we’re flying through the dark with nothing but ghost
light from dead gods to guide us. Of course, I’m crying, in love,
out of answers, longing for a safe road home— floating on air.
