Poems I Probably Won’t Write About My Imprisoned Son

After Jennifer Stewart Miller

Praise Poem About My Four-Year-Old Singing the Hallelujah Chorus from His Car Seat

Pantoum: On Responding to Friends When They Ask About How My Son Is “Doing” in State
Prison

Villanelle: In the Same Week, Matt Is Ejected from His Varsity Soccer Game for Sending an Opponent to the Hospital and His Ice Hockey Playoffs for Gloves Off—Again

After Driving Eight Hours to Visit My Son, We Eat Vending Machine Crackers in the Prison
Visitors’ Room

Poem in Which I Narrate My Son’s Prison Phone Call When We Unpack Killers of The Flower
Moon, and I Am Happy All Afternoon

On My Curiosity About How the Mobius Loop of Multiple Addiction Disorders, Childhood
Sexual Abuse, and Mental Illness Braided This Life for My Son

How to Cut out Dinosaur Cookies with a Small Boy Who Insists on Maintaining the Relative
Approximate Size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s Hands to Its Body

Sonnet: My Son’s Silence After the Parole Board Tells Him He Will Spend Another Year in
Prison

On Remembering the Sweet-Sour Scent of My Blond Toddler’s Body After Waking from a
Summer Nap

Poem in Which I Imagine What Happened: My Thirty-Something Son Fighting Three Arresting
Officers in His House While Knocking Over His Dogs’ Food and Water Bowls

On Recalling My Newborn Son’s Hold on His Flannel Hospital Hat, as if It Were Intentional, as
If It Would Always Protect Him

---

---

A frequent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, VA Smith’s poetry has appeared in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review, and Third Wednesday. VA’s third book, Adaptations, will be published by Green Writers Press Fall of 2025, when she will serve as Poetry Editor of River Heron Review. Her bliss is writing, cooking, hiking and loving on friends and family.