[Poetry] Two Poems by Hillary Smith-Maddern

A Mourning Symphony

A quiet thunder muffled

in the drums of cheap,

thrift store speakers

for years the volume knob

was lost on a number line, stuck

at a low grumble, generic static

so pervasive

I confused its cancer

for consonance.

I forgot I was a string quartet

tuned to the vagaries

of a Vermont spring, the acoustic 

hidden snow that finally melts in May.

In the mourning

of my fingertips

my mother’s voice

a sonorous hum, the wind

through a hollow tree.

In the orchestra of my growth,

she is the timpani

and the oboe.

Her rhythmic melody

makes my rhythmic melody

makes the burnt orange

leaves under my feet

a jubilant symphony.

The Closeness of Gods

My mother shits her pants our first day in Istanbul.

Sultanahmet Park twinkles with metallic bells, but all she sees are the squatters.

The night is blue

silk, spiced by out-of-sync Adhans blasted from stone pulpits. Still,

my mother shuffles winding streets back to our hotel, changes her soiled underwear, washes away

her embarrassment. How could we know then as we fed stray cats, let honeyed

baklava glob our chins, feasted on saffron

air that four years later, we would watch her turn

yellower than the Ramadan lights? How could we do anything but laugh? We make jokes

mixed with sympathy. We sit

on a bench outside the Blue Mosque,

bathe in its golden festivity, talk through our tomorrow as if today never happened.

Hillary Smith-Maddern is an educator whose work explores the intersections of feminism, queerness, and rage. She is a proud cat lady and an avid collector of neglected plants. When not writing, she can be found exploring obscure topics, hiking in the mountains, or passionately critiquing the patriarchy. Her poetry has appeared in Only Poems, Rogue Agent, and The Disappointed Housewife, among others. She lives in Western Massachusetts.