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Ryan Patrick Smith
Shadow Manual

Practice your edges and having no edges, what it is to dissolve. Understand motion: Nothing can remain still, or anything but the signal of a body holding a light back. You must shiver as a lampshade does, agree with the man spread over his bed to be any shape he asks his hands to cast against the ceiling: black dove, rabbit’s head. Be willing to wait. Be willing to move, slide, as though you are ice, keep your skin fluid and dark as a lake, and maybe the man prefers the dove to the rabbit, maybe he doesn’t, though he does love the angle and pulse of its wings. Give yourself to the day when it comes, unstuff your animal self, your shadow taxidermy. Be willing to disappear.

Ryan Patrick Smith earned his MFA in poetry at the University of Missouri - Saint Louis and teaches writing at St. Louis-area colleges. He has also served as a community creative writing instructor and editor for River Styx and Natural Bridge. A native Kentuckian, he currently lives in St. Louis with his girlfriend and a dog, and when he’s in the mood for it, he fights people with foam swords on his roof. His poetry appears in Salt Hill, DIALOGIST, and Architrave. His favorite sweet is Honey Smacks cereal.