The only antidote for America
is to go outside in the freezing cold winter
and dream of the most beautiful city on earth
or even this universe (there may not be any other).
This city is Granada. Inside my house
I think only of Minneapolis, of winter.
Outside my house I dream of Grenada and spring
on the slope leading towards the white limestone caves
where the pink dusk hovers over the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada.
By day I once walked through the summer palace of the kings of Spain.
By night I listened to flamenco and the percussive shoes of dancers.
By day the stained glass of the cathedral blossomed
like the roses in the summer palace. Beauty softened the blow
of the inquisition six hundred years before
just as a memory of joy softens the blow of the shootings,
and the military on the streets of Minneapolis. Nothing
is more consoling than the dream of a beautiful ruin,
for the ugliness happening to America. I lay memory
like a wreath on the roadside
where Alex Pretti and Renee Good died.
Katherine Smith’s poetry publications include appearances in Southern Review, Boulevard, North American Review, Ploughshares, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, and many other journals. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. Her third book, Secret City, appeared with Madville Press in 2022. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.
