SM Stubbs
Typewriter
The man with his hands on his hips
standing in the center of the room
cannot find his mother’s typewriter.
It is months after her passing and he’s angry
at himself for not thinking of it sooner
but the damn thing has to be somewhere.
She used it for letters and memos
and outlines of plans and typed
his college essays on it, too.
He loved the off-center keys
and how certain letters appeared
to be caught on the battleground
between her and whatever war
needed fighting. Her fingers wore the ink
off those keys. He misses her voice,
its drawl and delight. That machine
held her voice in hollow pockets
between the ribbon and the return.
Months later, he’s sitting at his desk
with grief gushing from his face
wanting to create for her,
those broken twigs against a white field
exactly the kind of code she used
to mean love, to signal
her reluctant departure.
SM Stubbs, the former owner of the Brooklyn craft beer bar Mission Dolores, was born & raised in south Florida. He has been the recipient of a scholarship to as well as a staff scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference; was nominated for the Pushcart and Best New Poets; won the 2019 Rose Warner Poetry Prize from The Freshwater Review; was finalist for the Gunpowder Press Barry Spacks Prize, the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and the Trio House Prize. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Carolina Quarterly, New Ohio Review,Iron Horse Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, December,and The Rumpus.