Virginia Smith
VA Smith’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review and Quartet. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee often, her first two books are Biking Through the Stone Age and American Daughters (Kelsay Books, 2022 and 2023). Her third book, the recently completed manuscript, Adaptations, will appear in 2025. A former Liberal Arts Teaching Excellence awardee at Penn State University, and a Professor of Teaching in The Department of English, VA gigs now as a staff member at River Heron Review, writes, bikes, and home chefs. Learn more about Virginia’s work at vasmithpoetry.com, or on Instagram and YouTube @vasmithpoetry.



Each Other 

                                         after Edgar Kunz’s Tuning

I rake rooftop beds,
pull wrinkled red berries

through soil loosened 
by vermiculite, wind.

This is the season
of crossings: sun South

to North, Hellebores nodding, 
pale pods opening 

to baby pink faces. 
C’s thin face looked

wind-whipped when I found 
her that deep winter night 

walking her dog on our street, 
a pause from her cat’s dying 

shrieks, her friend’s ZOOM
funeral the following day. 

This month’s brunch at her
house she showed me a photo

of her future puppy, still
in utero, due in April,

its brown umbilical cord 
crawling north like a worm. 

I bend to snip dried 
mum stalks and bloom, 

stroke their soft undergrowth.
C never wanted 

children. My eggs run dry, 
I dream I’m pregnant with

babies, puppies, kittens. 
Another living loop I crave. 

Often, my newborns 
disintegrate—then 

I carry night mourning
into the day. 


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