Throwback Thursday, "Smoke" Issue 292.2
I wrote "Smoke" when my paternal grandmother was dying and I realized how much I would miss her lit cigarettes. My daughter had just started kindergarten; I was aware of smoke disappearing from bars and restaurants, aware that she was not passing through its veil. I had noticed how my grandmother spent the last years of her life standing outside hotel rooms and banquet halls: a lonely figure. I was also conscious of what was new: Starbucks serving frothy coffee, screening tests for cancer, all the safety precautions for children who were supposed to be eternally observed and restrained. There is probably some moment for everyone who lives long enough when the world changes just enough to feel unfamiliar. This was that moment for me: the smoke cleared and my childhood was gone
Faith Shearin is the author of four books of poetry: The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), The Empty House (Word Press), Moving the Piano, and Telling the Bees (SFA University Press.) Recent work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review and Poetry East and has been read aloud by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. She is the recipient of awards from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work also appears in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poets and in Good Poems, American Places. She lives with her husband, her daughter, and a small, opinionated dachshund in a cabin on top of a mountain in West Virginia.
Illustrations by: Daniel Zender, Fulltime freelance illustrator and designer. Adjunct professor of art / design at Queens College, Queens, NY. Check out more of his work, here!
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