by Ellen McGrath Smith

The alphabets you ordered have arrived.

They're not bad looking,

every set a fusebox;

that's how neatly they're packaged,

even the plain one with just five bird tracks in dried mud

packs a punch

somehow.

How you'll combine them I can only guess.

I opened them because you weren't here in person,

out of curiosity or thinking I'm in possession of all

you can't put into words.

The wren-letters look so much like hungry beaks mid-squeak

it does no good to think in terms of consonants and vowels.

It does no good to think I’ll hear the words

I need to hear from you.

I'll leave them all between the oak door and the screen door

so you can pick them up when I'm not here.

One set has more than a thousand characters.

All day I made texts of them

in which there are ten obstacles

the hero must surpass, ten avatars of you

with which I have nothing to do.

I call this project Intimate.

Completely unafraid and terrified to be so.

My back is a tablet for your nascent fluency.

It’s best I’m facing elsewhere while I wait

for your reply.

Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Talking Writing, Los Angeles Review, and other journals and anthologies. Books include Scatter, Feed (Seven Kitchens 2014) and Nobody's Jackknife (West End Press 2015). Her chapbook Lie Low, Goaded Lamb was published in January 2023 by Seven Kitchens Press as part of its Keystone Series.