On the Metro North

Smile Ximai Jiang

I can’t find a real poem. Slouching toward Grand Central,

I scratch out what I’d hoped would become a poem

on a napkin, title it “New York Poem” because, because.

Downtown, a room full of strangers blazes toward warm spring

air like in the O’Hara you read to me after a party

or a concert—I don’t remember the details save for your voice

over the phone, cracking like the worn concrete

under my feet. Still solid, stumbling. I stay up

for no good reason, write love poems only

after the fact. Would you believe me if I told

the truth unslant: I am trying to become unafraid

of specificity. To jolt myself from the gathering dark

and blink back at that penny, that lone sparrow.

Pretzel crumbs dusting the asphalt. Red leather lanced

by uncertain light. If it won’t happen to me, you ask,

what shall I do? When someone you love enters the room 

in this city, you are easy to find.

Smile Ximai Jiang is a sophomore English major in Berkeley College and the Head Literary Editor of The Yale Literary Magazine. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, wildness, diode poetry journal, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Smile is thinking about squirrels and sumo oranges.

ABOUT THE ART | Circle Chair by Tian Hsu, 2025. Tian Hsu is a student at Yale University.