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Still Life with Antidepressants

Aaron Smith

The afternoon light lights
the room in a smudged
sheen, a foggy-eyed glow.

The dog digs at the couch,
low-growling at the mailman.
I’m spelling words with pills

spilled consolidating bottles:
yes and try and most of happy:
Maybe I’ll empty them all.

A woman I don’t know
is having a drill drill into her
skull. To get rid of the thing

requires entering the brain.
How to imagine a story
that ends with that ending?

I don’t know how to live my life,
but at least today I want to.

Aaron Smith has an MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh.

Smith is the author of three books of poetry: Primer (University of Pittsburgh Press); Appetite (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); and Blue on Blue Ground (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. His other awards include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Mass Cultural Council.

Smith is an associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About Aaron Smith

Themes

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About this Poem

“Sometimes the best poems are the results of accidents (literal and creative), and that is what happened here: I was consolidating pills from two bottles into one, and I accidentally spilled the pills on the coffee table. It was a dreary Northeastern winter, so I found myself sitting there seeing what words I could spell with the pills. I realized I was having a poem-y moment, and I started writing.”
—Aaron Smith

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More by this poet

Sissy

I can’t remember my dad calling me a sissy,
but he definitely told me not to be a sissy.
I secretly (or not so secretly) liked all the sissy
things. We had a hunting dog named Sissy.
Really: Sissy. My father nicknamed my sister: Sissy.
Still, he says, “How’s Sissy?” and calls her Sissy
when she goes home to visit him. Belinda (Sissy)

Aaron Smith

2023

Like Him

I’m almost forty and just understanding my father
doesn’t like me. At thirteen I quit basketball, the next year
refused to hunt, I knew he was disappointed, but never
thought he didn’t have to like me
to love me. No girls. Never learned
to drive a stick. Chose the kitchen and mom
while he went to the woods with friends who had sons
like he wanted. He tried fishing—a rod and reel
under the tree one Christmas. Years I tried
talking deeper, acting tougher
when we were together. Last summer
I went with him to buy a tractor.

Aaron Smith

2013

Brad Pitt

With cotton candy armpits and sugary
Crevices, sweat glazing your donut skin.
Have you ever been fat, Brad?
Have you ever wanted a Snickers
More than love and lain on your bed
While the phone rang and rolled one
On your tongue, afraid to eat it, afraid
It would make your jeans too tight? Have you
Barfed, Brad, because you ate it,
Ate all the take-out, licked
Brown sauce off the box while you sobbed?
Brad Pitt down in the pits chaining menthol
Ciggys in your thick-wallet life,
It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?

Aaron Smith

2005

Poems

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Still Life with Antidepressants

More by this poet

Sissy

Like Him

Brad Pitt

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