Erin Elizabeth Smith: The Thinness of Walls
Dot Learns the Thinness of Walls
When the Allegheny goes green
as '60s Redbook fashion,
Dot grows tired of her socks
damp with ice melt. As a child,
she would lay them on the radiator
that clanged like reckless church
bells until they hissed and spat
to steam. In her new apartment,
there is no heat—just a six-pack
and the mildew smell of sweaters
from the all-night laundromat
where women bounce
belching children who later loop
like starlings in the white
rows. Dot has only the patience
for Easy Mac and the Pirates
losing already. She empties
a beer into her mug, thinks
of her old twinned room
with matching sheets, a place
where the person fucking next door
didn't make Dot dream
of the man who touched her
in so many hotel beds,
a time when the rivers churned
in their own banks.
Dot Remembers Pennsylvania
Dot never felt home
in the dun hills of Austin,
rivers of spotted bikinis,
boys yelling “Fish outta water!”
She ate tamales, sipped Shiner
in too-big sunglasses
and touched David's knee
under every table. At home
she took her clothes off
like spilled honey and broke
the slats of their Ikea bed.
He would read her Russian
men, as she stroked his thin
blond hair in the warm dawn
that was nothing like the green
she knew, the deep pine
of the endless mountains
where she would count
roaches like sheep and stir
boxed macaroni
as much for steam
as the unnatural cheese.
There the light came less,
winters when the white tails
broke the purpled snow
without sound. Where she knew
the certain beauty of sandstone
and shale, and that there,
nothing would ever happen.
Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake Press 2011) and The Fear of Being Found, which was rereleased from Zoetic Press in 2016. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Ecotone, Mid-American, Florida Review, 32 Poems, Willow Springs, Third Coast, and Crab Orchard Review. She also teaches in the English Department at the University of Tennessee where she is also the Jack E. Reese Writer in the Library and serves as the Managing Editor for Sundress Publications and The Wardrobe.
