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

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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.