A Glance At Maddy Smith’s Candid Poetry
Maddy Smith is a poet and lyricist based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her goals as a writer are to be candid with her experiences and create poetry that is accessible to anyone who reads it. Each of Maddy’s poems encompass a unique level of beauty and vulnerability. She believes in expressive writing as a means of healing from her traumas and hopes that her readers will find solace in her words. When she’s not curating honest poems or captivating melodies, Maddy teaches English at Belmont University and Valor Voyager Academy.
“I want poetry to be for everyone so when I write, I try to make it beautiful and have all of the qualities of a good poem, but I also want anyone to be able to read and understand it.”
-Maddy Smith on her writing process
Poetry
Love’s
Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas
we let the huskies out of the car to run
between the gas station and the Holiday Inn.
They circle each other, savoring the apprehension,
and we watch them from afar, your arm snaked
around my shoulder, my head nestled into your sweaty neck.
We haven’t taken a photo together
but this one would be in shades of yellow,
freckles settling on your nose, the itchy
stubble of your cheek on my unwashed hair.
You whistle to keep the dogs from straying
too far and the vibrations in your throat hit my temple.
This is how it feels
for two mountains to face each other.
Unfinished
My grandma died in her sleep,
that’s how I choose to remember it.
Drifting in the night, symptomless,
like we never saw it coming.
Most mornings I check to see if Jon is still
breathing. I wake up in a panic, cold sweat
on steamed skin, and he lies so peacefully
that he cannot possibly be alive.
