Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah

Patricia Smith

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781566892995
• eBook ISBN: 9781566893671
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Poesie

Winner of 2013 Wheatley Book Award in Poetry

Finalist for 2013 William Carlos Williams Award

"Patricia Smith is writing some of the best poetry in America today. Ms Smith's new book, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, is just beautiful—and like the America she embodies and represents—dangerously beautiful. Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah is a stunning and transcendent work of art, despite, and perhaps because of, its pain. This book shines." —Sapphire "One of the best poets around and has been for a long time." —Terrance Hayes

"Smith's work is direct, colloquial, inclusive, adventuresome." —Gwendolyn Brooks

In her newest collection, Patricia Smith explores the second wave of the Great Migration. Shifting from spoken word to free verse to traditional forms, she reveals "that soul beneath the vinyl."

Patricia Smith is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. She lives in New Jersey.

1

OLD BACKDROPS DARK

HOW MAMAS BEGIN SOMETIMES

For my mother, Annie Pearl Smith

Raging tomgirl, blood dirt streaking her thick ankles

and bare feet, she is always running, screech raucous,

careening, dare and games in her clothesline throat.

Playing like she has to play to live, she shoves at what

slows her, steamrolls whatever damn thing won’t move.

Aliceville, Alabama’s no fool. It won’t get in her way.

Where’s that girl going? Past slant sag porches, pea shuck,

twangy box guitars begging under purple dayfall. Combs

spitting sparks, hair parted and scalps scratched, mules

trembling the back road, the marbled stares of elders

fixed on checkerboards. Cursed futures crammed into

cotton pouches with pinches of bitterroot, the horrid parts

of meat stewed sweet and possible. And still, whispers

about the disappeared, whole souls lost in the passage.

Frolicking blindly, flailing tough with cousins, sisters,

but running blaze, running on purpose, bounding toward

away. She can’t tag this fever, but she believes it knows

her, owns her in a way religion should. Toes tap, feet

flatten out inside the sin of shoes. She is most times

asking something, steady asking, needing to know,

needing to know now, taking wing on that blue restless

that drums her. Twisting on rusty hinge, that old porch door

whines for one long second ’bout where she was.

But that girl gone.

STILL LIFE WITH TOOTHPICK

For my father, Otis Douglas Smith,

and the grandparents I never knew

Maybe his father grunted, brusque and focused as he

brawled with the steering, maybe there was enough time

for a flashed invective, some hot-patched dalliance with God.

Then the Plymouth, sounding like a cheated-on woman,

screamed into hurtled revolt and cracked against a tree.

Bone rammed through shoulder, functions imploded,

compounded pulse spat slow thread into the road.

His small stuttering mother’s body braided up sloppy

with foliage and windshield, his daddy became

the noon’s smeared smile. For hours, they simply rained.

It is Arkansas, so the sky was a cerulean stretch, the sun

a patient wound. The boxy sedan smoldered and spat

along the blistered curve while hounds and the skittering

sniffed the lumping red river and blood birds sliced lazy over

the wreck, patiently waiting for the feast to cool. The sheriff

sidled up, finally, rolled a toothpick across his bottom teeth,

weighed his options. It was ’round lunchtime, the meatloaf

on special, that slinky waitress on call. He climbed

back into his cruiser and drove off, his mind clear. Awfully nice

of those poor nigras to help out. Damned if they didn’t

just drip right into the dirt. Pretty much buried themselves.

KEEP SAYING HEAVEN AND IT WILL

Otis is orphan in a very slow way. Relatives orbit the folded him, paint his parents to breath with stories that take the long way around trees, stories about the time before the two of them set out in the rumbling Plymouth, going somewhere, not getting there.

Otis is orphan in a very one way. Only one him. Only the solo with only happy stories to hear, no one says car. No one says crash or never or dead now. Everyone says heaven. They pat his head with flat hands, say heaven with all their teeth, say heaven with their shredding silk throats. They say heaven heaven heaven while their eyes rip days down.

Otis is orphan in a very wide way. They feed him dripping knots of fatback, bowlfuls of peppered collards, cheap chicken pieces sizzled thick and doughy, stewed shards of swine. They dip bread in bowls of melted butter, fry everything, okra and tomatoes, fish skin, gizzards, feet. And the women shovel sugar and coconut meat into baking pans, slosh sweet cream into bowls and stir and bake and it is all everything for him for his little empty gut. They feed him enough for two other people, thou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. OLD BACKDROPS DARK
• 2. WE SHINED LIKE THE NEW THINGS WE WERE
• 3. LEARNING TO SUBTRACT
• 4. MAD AT MY WHOLE DAMN FACE
• 5. WAIT