New Year Sestina by Maggie Smith

The new year doesn’t feel new
at all, says my oldest child,
the one who sees
everything slant. So what
if the world’s a year older?
It’s like when you turn

seven but still feel six. Turning
one page doesn’t make a book new.
Like that. I mean the old
year’s still around, ghostchild
yanking at my sleeve. But what
does it want? To be seen,

to levitate our chairs? Now, see,
it’s fucking with me. It turned
and I waited to feel—what?
Changed? Somehow new
myself? Even my child,
seven years old,

wonders when the old
year will tire of us and see
itself out. This ghostchild
is an amateur haunt, turning
all the lights on. The news
sifts down, confetti. What

scheduled glitter, what
scheduled joy. My oldest
was right: the year’s not new
enough. And not alone. See,
last year returns
as shadow: shadowchild,

shadowyear, yearchild.
It walks our halls for what?
Last year had its turn
but wants another—that old
story. It wants us to see
what we’re missing. What’s new?

But I’ve turned ghost enough, old
enough. Even my child sees
years for what they aren’t: new.

Maggie Smith’s most recent collections are Good Bones, forthcoming in September 2017 from Tupelo Press, and The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in the New York Times, Best American Poetry 2017, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, and many other journals and anthologies. In 2016 her poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.