Patricia Smith is the author of five books of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, included in the list of the Library Journal's Best Poetry Books of 2008, and one of NPR's top five books of 2008; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection, winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and About.com’s Best Poetry Book of 2006. She also authored the ground-breaking history Africans in America and the award-winning children’s book Janna and the Kings. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly and many other journals, and she has been performed around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival, the Bahia Festival, the Schomburg Center and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. She is a professor at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island, and is on the faculty of both Cave Canem and the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.

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When they are sugar-smothered, swathed in glass, their eyes spark

like bundling fists and the patch of silence just north of their

batteried breasts sweats like an idling engine. All this before

the music begins. I craft a soundtrack, all re-looped thud, wails,

and mechanized stutter, designed to charm hips toward commerce.

Flip a switch, and their abiding bones accept chaos. They gallop,

flinging fringe, stiff bouffants whipping loose and limp, flailing

arms slicing through the thick humidity of bondage. My girls

are such urgent gifts, recklessly glittered, whistling pant through

pinched noses, snorting shamelessly with the boogie unbridled.

I am the artist of them in the air. Watch my offerings twirl above

the din on tenuous hooks--closest to heaven, but hotter than hell.

 

 

 

 Your boobies bloom, your hips prepare to sway.

You twirl, sleek-skinned in mirrors, so amazed.

This stunning turn will change the way you play.

 

Your arms still flail, your gangly limbs still splay

like stars. But woman is the child I raise.

Your boobies bloom, your hips prepare to sway.

 

Sweet dervish, tumbler, I watch as you stray

through childhood’s chaos, life as swirl and haze

and stunning turns. Don’t change the way you play.

 

Safe in my hugs, just listen while I say

what mothers say: I dread the looming days,

your boobies’ bloom, your hips. Prepare to sway

 

back to this, toward me, toward gleeful days

of hipless Barbie dolls, of girlish craze--

no stunning turns to change the way you play.

 

With heart squeezed shut, I warn you of the way

young boys will stumble dizzied toward your blaze.

Your boobies bloom, your hips prepare to sway.

This stunning turn will change the way you play.

 ---------

 

Before she died

this girl we knew said

because, in fact, she had

 

When we added that to her

farewell Facebook page

we received messages of confusion

from as far away as the Yucatan

 

so we had to explain that in

West Texas, where this girl

was from, the earth sometimes

throws up balls of fiery light

 

that bounce around the sky

like big baby toys

or slide between the stars

with what many have said

 

is a marked resemblance

to the angry eyes of a

spirit lizard hungry to regain

what he has lost

 

Immediately, a thousand tweets

poured in: Is that a sign?

our community wondered

Should fear, confusion, rule the day?

But being who we are,

 

we already had an answer.

Of course not, we responded,

using not only the latest technology

but all the old, underground methods

that we love so well

 

A sign would mean “The next thing

you hear will be our instructions,”

and everybody knows that we

don’t listen to those anymore

 

A sign would mean

that we should prepare

and hey, we couldn’t be

any more ready than we are today

 

So it is our opinion that

the Marfa Lights should, instead,

be categorized as a mere phenomenon

and out there in the dark and

troubled world, a billion, zillion

members of the community

passed on this sliver of enlightenment:

 

It’s just Our Sponsor, doling out

more of those unexplained

interjections into the daily grind

that mean nothing to anyone

 

until you make the effort

to think about them

And dead or alive, we have

been thinking, long and hard

 

though we will not reveal

our conclusions until

the End of Times, which has

been scheduled repeatedly

 

and then canceled because

no one can imagine

what we would do

without each other

 

without these comings and

goings, and the little gasp

of recognition that is all

we are allowed to leave behind