The Best Poem of 2016, so say some ...

The poem is called “Good Bones," by Maggie Smith, a poet in Bexley, Ohio.

It’s about making the most of a world that is far from perfect.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

Smith’s poem was first published in the online literary journal Waxwing in June 2016, a couple days both after the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and after the murder of British politician Jo Cox in West Yorkshire.