The Body's Question: Poems

by Tracy K. Smith Narrated by Tracy K. Smith

Overview

The Body's Question by Tracy K. Smith received the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African-American poet, selected by Kevin Young. Confronting loss, historical intersections with race and family, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood, Smith gathers courage and direction from the many disparate selves encountered in these poems, until, as she writes, "I was anyone I wanted to be."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171446192
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Serenade

I am dancing with Luis,
City of Restless Vendors, of Steep Embankments,
Luis takes my hand in his hand And draws circles in the air Above my head. I am spinning.
Whose head dangles A limp carnation From its neck. I am spinning So giddily the bottles of beer and liquor And the bags bereft of their ice Form one great lake of ecstatic liquid.
Earlier tonight in the plaza Fireworks so close overhead We might have touched them On their way back down. People Ate cotton candy and roast corn Singing No vale nada la vida
Thirst

The old man they called Bagre Who welcomed us with food And rice-paper cigarettes At the table outside his cabin Was the one who told the soldiers To sit down. They were drunk.
It was night by then. We smoked To keep off the mosquitoes.
Before the soldiers sat down,
Their leader was called Jorge.
Maybe this is a story About the old man they called Bagre.
Niña Fantasma

When he comes, Mario asks
Mario sweeps up the leaves Fallen during the night,
Mario sweeps and his body remembers Lifting her from the thicket, hugging Her chill limbs to warm them As he carried her the pathless mile home.
Brief Touristic Account

III.13

It was evening. You were waiting With a friend, lights flickering —
The driver had slowed To mouth the number of each house We drove past before yours. Yours —
A faint music and your voice Interrupting itself To reply.

III.14

There was light entering through doorways,
There was the traffic outdoors,
There were the wet prints Where our feet had been,

And the two towels Drying in the sun.

III.17

The patio door Framed a tree-occluded sky,
Sometimes I rose At the same time as one Of them, and I'd follow him Or he'd follow me over The tangle of legs and bottles Spoking out from the table We sat circling. Then I'd

Go in the door on the right To piss quietly, thinking What it must be like To stand alone in the garden Sending great, glad,
III.22

You, her, him, me.
111.24

The worm in the bottle Was supposed to suggest What exactly?
Or something slower?
III.26

You woke when the moon dropped below the black waves,
Giving the sense of a sky Under the sky.
The glimpse of its inverse:
Finitude. And as synonym for Love, both noun and verb:
III.28

There was the room devoid of light.
There were the neighbors' voices Singing to God, and the delicate Violence of our bodies renouncing speech,
III.30

We slept A few hours only In the small bed In your mother's house.
You were the first To disappear,
Water — current Spilling into chill current Like dark muscles Veined with white —
Over the edge Of a drifting boat.

Gospel: Manuel

There's a story told here By those of us who daydream To the music of crystal and steel.

We brought it down From mountains built of fog Where we left the girls we married

And old men married to the earth.
And from that dark spot low in each of us Where alone we disappear to, breathing The cool nothing of night, letting the city

Farther inside with each siren bleat Each assault of neon light, grounding Ourselves to this world with one hand

Under the head, the other invisible —
We learned it by heart So that each time one of us told it,
And the red earth dug up By gangs of faithless dogs.
Almost not wanting to believe.

Gospel: Miguel (el Lobito)

My brother shook me awake And handed me our father's Hunting gun. I followed him

To the hill that sits between towns.
like two teams After a leather ball.
Whoever won Would go into the woods And take whatever grew.

That night, we sat on the hill Watching the fires burn.
He said. Nothing That means anything Has changed.

Gospel: Luis

The river we crossed to get here Is a wide, black, furious serpent That swells with laughter When you step close.

At its tail, in a snarl Of branches where the rocks Come up high enough and land Stalls the current,

That's where they say you'll find Bundles of money And, more than anything, bodies Of horses and boys like us.

I remember how deep The dark got.

Nothing we could do but wait.
In the sound of what roamed,
Would shine like that from far away.

Gospel: Juan

We crossed the border Hours before dawn Through a hole Dug under a fence.

We crossed Dressed as soldiers,
The coyotes
To drag behind,
Farther off,
We crossed On our bellies.
Gospel: Alejandro (el Monstruo)

And then it was day and we were free,
When I saw the hills, how they resembled The bodies of our women, I knew this country Never stopped being our country.

But there are people who don't know And will never care. White faces,
Like empty plates.
I climb to the sixth floor Carrying bags of beer. I sit up With whoever's awake and before long

We're floating. Embriagados.
Sometimes, we make ourselves believe We never left, the traffic Nothing but wind against the roof.

Gospel: Jesús

I'd like to smash a goblet in my fist.
CHAPTER 2

Drought

1.

The hydrangea begins as a small, bright world.
Each bouquet will cringe and die in time While the dry earth watches. It is ugly,
But there is no choice. I learn how:
2.

We go to the lake. I am the middle son And most beautiful, my face and chest,
The others giggle near shore but I am swimming Toward the island in the center, a vacant country.
3.

Not the flame, but what it promised.
No one missed my shadow Moving behind the house, so I led it To the dry creek-bed and laid it down Among thistledown, nettle,
And the brambles whispered.
Flickering with light, as God is light.
Betty Blue

I have always been this beautiful And this dead.

Like pages ripped from a passionate book,
To the inside of someone's greatcoat,
From my soft cot, I look only up,
For the implacable pale blue of this room Where I'm bundled and belted down,

Waiting for something that happened long ago —
Before that warm weight above me or below,
The shapes of words enter and play At making sense. A globe

Of daylight, like a cat, caught In tree boughs.

I wanted a different kind of pain. For it to come From inside and want out

And to rip its way there, howling that fat, flat way Life does.

To lift up my skirt and forget for once What to expect.

Mangoes

The woman in a blouse The color of daylight Motions to her daughter not to slouch.
She considers her hands, at rest Like pale fruits in her lap. Should she Gather them in her skirt and hurry Down the tree in reverse, greedy For a vivid mouthful of something Sweet? The sun gets brighter As it drops low. Soon the room Will glow gold with late afternoon.
Desire is a city of yellow houses As it surrenders its drunks to the night.
Appetite

It's easy to understand that girl's father Telling her it's time to come in and eat.
The girl is not hungry enough To go in. She has spent all day Indoors playing on rugs, making her eyes See rooms and houses where there is only Shadow and light. She knows That she knows nothing of the world,
But her father is ready to stuff himself On mashed potatoes and sliced bread,
He's ready to take a bite Of the pink tomatoes while his mouth Is still full with something else,
Too many eyes without centers For one day. Too many Dice, cards, dogs with faces like sharks Tethered to chains. It gives him An empty feeling below his stomach,
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Body's Question"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Tracy K. Smith.
Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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