“Inheritance” by Scott Smith

Skip the words on that page.
I won’t remember them anyway.
Unlock the safe and fill my backpack.
Throw out Hemingway
quantum physics
the anthology of post-modern painters.
No time for trivia
when there’s cold
weathered cash to sleep on.
Stop wondering what will become of me.
If you really needed to know
you would work at the morgue.
You could unzip the bag and see
the purple ice cube
with overgrown nails.
A constant source of sentimental guilt.
The long lost figure, criticism, growled
and hissed into your guts.
“Your belt should buckle—not your chair.”
Suck it up and shred the evidence

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Scott Smith earned his MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has an alarming number of sharpened pencils on his desktop.