Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah

by Patricia Smith

  the floorboards, guffaws from the wiry crown uncurling in my hand.

  You stood your ground, smiled sweet simply, urged me to understand.

  I looked numbly at the thing that I held. Suddenly I was blacker than

  I ever was, colored all over everything, Negro was unleashed, jigaboo

  came tumbling down, jungle bunny came out of hiding. My real hair

  unflattened in new air, popped its day of dust and sprang corkscrews,

  lending the drama its only motion. I opened my mouth to drown you

  in raging, rip deep gash through the god of you. But all that came out,

  stunned for all this time, were the first three words of this poem.

  CARNIE

  Not good enough, not teeth enough, for Riverview,

  he rolls into town under the shoulders of night with

  his sleazed and pimpled caravan. Taught to screech

  inwardly at his filth, we nevertheless find ourselves

  drawn to his gray devastation of grin, the sneaky way

  stories map themselves onto the backs of his hands.

  Girls, giddy in the throes of repulsion, can’t help

  visioning him as a blazing and wordless fuck, skin

  sandy, grating, the mud of his open mouth sliding all

  over us. His snake-lidded eyes know how we resent

  balance. In line, steamed and bewildered, we consider

  his bitter knowledge of levers and gears, listen to

  muttered instructions on all the best ways not to die.

  And admit it now, little girl. With spit and the heel

  of a hand, you seek to be wildly industrious. You

  want to clean off a place on his body, find a patch

  of landscape the sun has not quite killed, and you

  want to wallow in the dirt denied you by Mama,

  screaming into the blue of freefall, riding the natural

  stink off that boy. And you got your head thrown back.

  GUESS WHO’S CLOSEST TO HEAVEN

  Forefinger, nail clipped blunt, breaks the chill skin

  of the pomade, tunnels for the bottom

  of the tin, scoops out a sweet-scented lump.

  Smeared between slow hands, the smell breaks open,

  life leaking from violet, and lends Sunday

  stink to thin hair wired and dark from washing.

  And this happens behind so many doors—

  in Mister Odell’s cluttered kitchenette,

  in Freddy the butcher’s misted mirror.

  They groom for glory, snap on dull Spiedels,

  pour all of their ache into squarish serge.

  They are so close to dying they can tell

  you what their heaven smells like and it smells

  different for each of them: to Mister Earl,

  it’s steam and anise. To Ole James Markum,

  dead-slow knotting his noose of a necktie,

  heaven smells of Tuscaloosa summer.

  Between them and there, perhaps another

  hundred Sundays of can’t-flinch ritual,

  splashing pungent scent into throat hollows

  and cave of the chest, treating tired wingtips

  to a Vaseline shimmer. Old suits freed

  from plastic, creases blade-sharp, double-checked.

  And then on Sunday, Second Street Baptist

  or Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist

  or Church of the Living Lord opens up

  before them with its splintered pews and fat,

  peach-powdered usherettes. Our men rock with

  The Word, feel that huge holy hand icing

  their spines. Content with being softly doomed,

  they mumble memorized gospel and feel

  a hollow swell inside them. They pray for

  minor comforts, their knees hurting like hell

  with the coming thunder. But no amount

  of kneeling can move those suits. And, goddamn.

  Their hair is perfect.

  HIS FOR THE TAKING

  My mother’s sister, Mary Sanders, wailed

  You muthafucka! just before throat-snorting

  the contents of her perfectly-portioned dinner

  and hawking a glob of it toward the wall

  beside my head. Her eyes were rolling worlds,

  lit maniacally from behind, her hair steamed

  and untwirling. The hospital room smelled

  warmly of spittle, scream, and scrubbed piss,

  and again I cursed my mother for portioning

  my teenage time this way, charging me with

  the third-shift-weekends spoon-feeding of my

  unraveled aunt, her brain dimmed and distanced

  by Alzheimer’s and errant shards of Mississippi.

  She recognized none of us, slapped and spat

  at our attempts to be relatives, and reveled

  in her new hot vocabulary, rolling goddamnit

  and shit and kiss my black country ass around

  on her formerly God-fearing Delta tongue.

  I pressed buttons for her, inched forkfuls

  of dry chicken toward her clenched teeth,

  wiped her venom from my cheeks and hair.

  Other sicknesses whistled through her pores

  and she slept fitfully, feces drying under her nails.

  It was weeks before I noticed that my mother

  wasn’t part of the reluctant rotation of caregivers.

  She spent her days just outside the closed door

  of her sister’s dismantling, numb to the blaring,

  praying for God to enter the hospital room,

  wrap His tired arms around someone, and leave.

  DIRTY DIANA

  There are oh-so-many things a woman can do with the business

  end of a diamond. Cut a man’s throat and the blood rinses away

  easily. Slice an eerie, convincing grin into the back of your head.

  Gut a rival. Snip an emergency hem to release the utter glamour

  of knobbed knees. Magically turn Tuesday’s wig into Saturday’s.

  The secret is to never stop crooning, to inject your roundabout lyric

  with air, a little violence, frosted water. Warble like you were born

  with the engine of switched hips, like your breasts suddenly swing

  beyond your absence of breasts. Ms. Ross, you will be underestimated.

  Just make sure they never find out how you killed Florence, slyly

  slipping just the slightest hesitation into her fat heart, introducing

  the suggestion that it explode. Fling glitter at their faces and cup

  a diamond in your palm. Shimmy your history into a sequined

  sheath, where no one will ever find it. Disguise it as sin, as sway.

  AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH PETER NARAS

  or, The Regrettable Dramatic Arc of Loving a White Boy

  It’s a wonder our grind never toppled, that we were lap and gulp sincerely, lips layered away, pubics in expecting parallel, burning the outlawed outline of our writhe into the lawn, outlandish hues vital and nasty in erupting weeds, our bound structure never wearying of the questioning prod, the wishful pummel, ninth period over, the snarlers and spitters slow gone and we were out loud, right out in the open, out of our damned minds running our tongues around the edges of war, how socially insane our primal twist, the doomed conjoined clock of us, the engine of our against, your fingers a disruption in hair just learning to explode. Every Thursday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday, Wednesday, we stumbled in frustrated dangle away from the grounds of Carl Schurz High School, temperatures skewered, our souths hammered and drip through denims. Separate buses spit their oily smoke to the north and west and we pressed radiant genital ache into the ride, red-inking continued crave into matching notebooks, our poetry ripped through with dactyls and something no one but two ballad-battered fools would call a future.

  Love at our sixteen smothered the jointly-ad
dressed niggernote.

  Don’t know

  why it took your father’s friend so long to see us, to witness our open wounds browning the grass. Imagine his gape his flushed goddamnit his bulge-eyed conviction to upright the collapsing, to shove the wild way-ward back into orbit, to push those colors back inside the lines, to reteach the day away from the fall. I’ve dreamed often of his vile and sputtered reportage, spittle showering the receiver, every other word a resolute and hurtled scarlet.

  AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH PETER NARAS, TAKE 2

  or, Today’s After-School Special Veers into Explosive Territory

  Let me tell you why it never occurred to me to be afraid.

  You took off your glasses, and you were perfect, eyes bluer

  than any prince written, reachably gorgeous, no hiccup

  of light when you stretched for me. No discussion of why

  we shouldn’t tangle and pump against your locker between

  periods, why I shouldn’t wrap yards of yarn around your

  class ring, wear it dripped between new breasts. We snuck

  around and about and pretended normal, lying to parents

  about meetings and committees, entering the junior prom

  through separate doors, boy, damn decorum, I loved you.

  I know I did because I know some things by now. I know

  that your body was a wizened and ill-advised battlefield

  against mine, that your mouth was razored, that “I love you”

  was a huge and unwieldy declaration, the kind of blue you

  immediately unforgive. My parents weren’t yours. They

  considered you the naptime-sized American dream, a rung

  on the stepladder, the climb every white-capped mountain.

  Just be careful, they said, while your father spat blades, said

  (these are the words I’ve imagined, slapped with the wide-eye)

  I’ll throw you out of my house if I hear about you seeing

  that black girl again. Joe, I loved you then, and I love you

  still. We are drama born of the truth tell, our tongues so stupid

  and urged they continually reached the back of our throats.

  Who hates me for actually knowing this? There are hundreds

  of songs written about all the things you can’t do at sixteen.

  There are a million songs written about what I didn’t do with you.

  5

  WAIT

  AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH PETER NARAS, TAKE 3

  or, Cue the Waterworks

  When I was a kid, my mother convinced my father that I’d done

  something terrible, she urged him to spank me, and he did.

  His blows were reluctant pillows, pullback and whisper slow,

  more for appearance than correction, and while he whupped,

  he cried. Slow, beautiful cries, elegant and silent, he wept.

  After vowing to never touch his daughter that way, he went

  through the prescribed motions, hiding his tears, and I bucked,

  bellowed, scripting my twist, knowing what drama was required.

  That was the first time I saw a man cry. When your dad became

  a bomb, vowing to blow at the continued thought of your mouth

  on me, we stood at the bus stop that last day, matching fingertips,

  major players in a terrible love story’s climactic scene. I boarded

  the bus and clawed the window while you stood on the sidewalk,

  the sugar of what we’d been staining your cheeks; all that was

  missing were the drooped tulips and aching strings. And the gulp

  that happens when a man loses hold and forgets the definition

  of man. I wonder if your father ever wonders where I am.

  I wonder if he wonders who I was.

  ASKING FOR A HEART ATTACK

  For Aretha Franklin

  Aretha. Deep butter dipped, scorched pot liquor,

  swift lick off the sugar cane. Vaselined knees

  clack gospel, hinder the waddling South. ’Retha.

  Greased, she glows in limelit circle, defending

  her presence with a sanctified moan, ass rumbling

  toward curfew’s backstreets where jukes still gulp silver.

  Goddess of Hoppin’ John and bumped buttermilk,

  girl know Jesus by His first name. She the one

  sang His drooping down from ragged wooden T,

  dressed Him in blood-red shine, conked that holy head,

  rustled up excuses for bus fare and took

  the Deity downtown. They found a neon

  backslap, coaxed the DJ and slid electric

  till the lights slammed on. Don’t know where you goin’,

  who you going with, but you sho can’t stay here.

  Aretha taught the Good Son slow, dirty

  words for His daddy’s handiwork, laughed as he

  first sniffed whiskey’s surface, hissed him away when

  he sought to touch His hand to the blue in her.

  She was young then, spindly and thin ribs paining,

  her heartbox thrumming in a suspicious key.

  So Jesus blessed her, opened her throat and taught

  her to wail that way she do, Lawd she do wail

  that way don’t she do that wail the way she do

  wail that way, don’t she? That girl can wail that way.

  Now when Aretha’s fleeing screech jump from juke

  and reach been-done-wrong bone, all the Lord can do

  is stand at a wary distance and applaud.

  Oh yeah, and maybe shield His heart a little.

  So you question her several shoulders,

  the soft stairs of flesh leading to her chins,

  the steel bones of an impossible dress

  gnawing raw into bubbling obliques?

  Ain’t your mama never schooled you in how

  black women collect the world, build other

  bodies onto our own? No earthly man

  knows the solution to our hips, asses

  urgent as sirens, our titties bursting

  with traveled roads. Ask Aretha just what

  Jesus whispered to her that night about

  the gospel hidden in lard and sugar.

  She’ll tell you why black girls grow fat

  away from the world, and toward each other.

  HIP-HOP GHAZAL

  Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

  decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

  As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

  inhaling bass line, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

  Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ’tween floorboards,

  wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.

  Engines, grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.

  Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of swinging true hips.

  Gotta love us girls, just struttin’ down Chicago streets

  killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.

  Crying ’bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off

  what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.

  LOOKING TO SEE HOW THE EYES INHABIT DARK, WONDERING ABOUT LIGHT

  In December 1999, Stevie Wonder sought to undergo an operation to partially restore his sight. He made the round of talk shows, trumpeting the possibilities, before the story dropped off the radar. Doctors had declared that he was not a good candidate for the procedure.

  Look. When he assumes he is alone, he absently claws the air for light.

  See how he pulls the sun toward himself. Even as he conjures, wonders,

  eyes spit their cruel blanks, drench him in mud. His mama is the dark;

  dark is his daddy. A shiver in his lids becomes his next church, his eyes

  wonder at the black bottomle
ss flash, the siphoning of narrative. He can see

  light as it exists in memory—lush, fleeting, then maddening. Made ya look.

  Darkness strives to be his comfort. But he is obsessed by the need to look,

  eyes flat, roiling, his head adjusting as if. He tilts toward each tongue of light,

  wonders at its evil sweet, squints, strains. Dark whispers, if you must see,

  see the gifts I have given—the unflinching knowledge of self, the wild wonder

  light has birthed in you, how it blooms without answer. He touches his eye.

  Look. He lifts the lid, pokes the dead orb with a finger, cries out again to dark.

  Seasons change only on his skin. Chill and steam nudge the edges of dark.

  Wondering what year, what June, what clock it is, his useless eyes look,

  light upon layered shadow, scan the unraveled empty. He curses those eyes,

  eyes that simply loll and water and grow impossibly wide, clawing for light.

  Look how completely he has learned the language of the hand, stark wonder

  darkening weary palms as he presses them flat against against, wanting to see.

  Eyes, they say, can be sexed, propped wide, flooded with daybreak. He’ll see

  lightning, dim dance, maybe a minute of day. Doctors tout the shattered dark,

  look beneath trembling lids for doors, promise his child’s face. And he wonders—

  wonder being the only response he trusts—as hope is unleashed. It hurts to look.

  Dark, desperately clutching, woos him, redefines beauty as the absence of light.

  See his torso ripple, how he fights with his own fingers, how he weeps for eyes.

  Wonder how long it will take before those who whisper the promise of eyes

  look hard at the one-soul religion they’ve crafted, scan their data and finally see

  dark as it owns him—numb to their screeching miracles, overpowering the light?

  Light is overrated, they decide. Best not to shock the system, rip holes in the dark,

  see up close the cacophonous stanzas sight scribbles over time. It hurts to look.

  Eyes overwork, tangle lessons best learned by touch. It’s much safer to wonder.

  Light a match, wave it back and forth, watch him follow the waltzing heat. Wonder,

  darkly, what hollow blessings he has left to cling to. He follows music with his eyes,