In “Outside Today,” t love smith creates a portrait of more than weather, a study of how the speaker weathers negotiating between self and world and the desire to be seen for who they truly are. An “interrobang” is a punctuation mark that combines a question mark with an exclamation, and what a fitting image for any self, and especially the non-binary self, who can be at once visible and invisible, dealing with pride and shame, lies and truth, and the ever-ready smackdown from powers who want to control them. I love the way smith makes ice and bone marrow both literal and metaphorical. And I love the desire to be seen as a self with integrity, making their androgyny visible. Part of the poem’s music is in the repetition of consonants, the m’s and b’s and k’s. I think of the poem as a sixteen-line sonnet with a turn after the one-word line. That turn is to questions of wealth and value, imposed and internalized lies. Indeed, what have any of us been holding onto? What shame and pride and lies? And for what purpose? This is a crucial interrogation. “Spit it out!” the poet says. As I read it, the poem begins with the morning need to shovel and shoulder whatever has fallen, and it ends with a release, the light no longer obstructed. (“Outside Today” was originally published as a staff spotlight in The Stonecoast Review.)
—Betsy Sholl, Maine Arts Journal Poetry Editor
Outside Today
It’s a type of morning makes ice of bone marrow.
A few shovel scoops of wet powder over the shoulder,
the marrow heavies—slush. Balmy becomes lip sweat
in whisps of blonde whiskers you sometimes wish
were darker brown to make your androgyny visible,
belt out in tune, Can you see me now!? Interrobang!
interrobang?
There may well be eighty-one billion or more interrobangs
and there’s half that amount of smackers in the slack
pocket of the “Richest Man Here.” As our bones erode
under our linens, crack and spill like milk to linoleum
from source. Steam the kettle and whistle out
the silhouette of a survivor body. When the light
gets stuck in your throat due to obstruction build up,
Spit it out! What you have been holding onto, and for what,
for so long, for shame-induced pride, for lies, for what?
“Shovel of Gold” is indeed a “golden shovel,” that is, a poetic form in which the words of a line or more from another poet’s poem are used as the end-words in the new poem. Hafiz was a 14th-century Persian mystic and poet. Here we see the way smith’s new poem plays in delicious tension with the original statement. It’s as if our speaker knows the mystic’s sentiments well, and also knows the complexity of our actual lives and relationships. “The sky doesn’t break even / even in the ever-after,” but still the speaker would love to throw out the accounts and give that kind of love to the addressee. The poem is full of word play and little ironies, and uses a clear, contemporary voice while at the same time keeping us aware of the original source of inspiration.
Shovel of Gold
after Hafiz
The sky doesn’t break even.
Even in the ever-after.
The sun that made us all
has made this
- Even when time
gives way to The
Powers of the Sun,
it’s easy to say, Never
again, but who says
things like that to
the Sun? or to the
Grand Mother of Earth?
Certainly it wasn’t you.
A receipt for all you owe?
No, that, my friend, was me.
Couldn’t bear to look,
we didn’t know what
from all that happens.
Who did we come here with?
If only I could give you a
love like the sun or a love
like the one that you like.
I would like to give you that.
t love smith (they/them/theirs) is a queer and non-binary poet from unceded Wabanaki land who graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program. They are the founder and Development Curator of the Trans Poetics Archive. They have had a few poems and essays published in online literary journals. They also won the 2026 Maine Literary Award for short works in poetry.