Steven M. Smith
Summer 2024 | Poetry
From the Psychiatrist’s Notebook: Traveling Salesman Shares His Dream About Going on the Road to Find His Estranged Wife
He devised a mind map and sprawled it
out on the dashboard next to the folded
commitments and adjusted her excuses
in the rearview mirror. As soon as the engine
started, the running lights were on.
He adjusted his crotch and revved his heart.
Since winter was whimpering to the north,
he let the trickle of her whispers tow him south.
But later blinded by the empty passenger seat
of setting sun and the blind spot of questionable love,
he almost ran a tollbooth at the Tunnel of Lost Love
where the attendant, that winged tubby kid, shot
an arrow at the driver’s side window of his heart—
and fortunately missed. (He said he has already
been poisoned by too much desire.) So, then he took
a wrong right and started driving west. Soon radio
reception left him a Dear John song of static.
He thinks he started feeling faint at Broken
Promise Pass where the irony of their
Continental Divide confused him—he saw
bruised flowers embroidered on a gown of snow.
And much later when twilight groped along
a heart-stricken swerve of highway, he saw
a familiar figure wearing a dark jacket,
white shirt, and skinny tie, a cigarette smoldering
in his left hand, standing by a signpost
shimmering in the fog: Unrest Area Just Ahead.
Steven M. Smith is the author of the poetry collection Strongman Contest (Kelsay Books, 2021). His poems have appeared in publications such as The American Journal of Poetry, Aji, The Worcester Review, Rattle, Ibbetson Street Press, Better Than Starbucks, The Big Windows Review, Book of Matches, Offcourse, Hole in the Head Review, Third Wednesday, and Mudfish. He recently retired from the State University of New York at Oswego, where he worked as the Writing Center director. He lives in Liverpool, New York.