The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison

Selected by Kimiko Hahn as a winner of the 2012 Dorset Prize, Maggie Smith’s poems question whether the realms of imagination and story can possibly be safe.This house at the end of the street isn’t all that it appears to be, as Smith’s verses design a dark mythical landscape hidden between the picket fences. In “The List of Dangers”, she writes, “The sun was a saw blade,/a yellow circle with teeth. Terrible birds with plumage/of fire scorched whatever they touched: The black/mailbox opened its mouth to the black street”. This is a world unwelcome to the children that play in it, whether they know it or not. The vivid imagery and colors of any old neighborhood fill the pages with life, giving Smith’s work an ominous relatability. Her stories leave us grasping at who said what and, more importantly, where the line between fairy tale and horror story really lies.