Teahouse of the Almighty

by Patricia Smith

I am a woman.

  I will rub your weary head,

  dance close to you,

  shuck you silver peas for dinner.

  He was Otis, my father.

  But you are Willie Earl and James and Ernest and Jimmy Lee.

  All of you, frail charmers, gentle Delta, bodies curled against

  the time gone, the time coming. I grieve you tottering toward

  death, I celebrate you clinging to life. Open bony dark-veined

  arms and receive me, a woman in the shape of your daughter,

  who is taking on your last days as her very blood, learning

  your whispered language too late to stop your dying,

  but not too late

  to tell

  this story.

  HOW TO BE A LECHEROUS LITTLE OLD BLACK MAN AND MAKE LOTS OF MONEY

  for John Lee Hooker

  First, you got to get the blues.

  This is easy if you are a person of any gender,

  and possess a pulse, a cheating lover,

  a stalking ex-lover, a used Yugo, a pumping heart,

  an empty wallet, a half-dead dog, an empty frigerator,

  one last cigarette butt, a good memory, a nosy mama,

  a lonely room, a quick trigger, roving eyes,

  an addiction to whiskey,

  nothing but the clothes on your back,

  a jones for your neighbor’s wife,

  a jones for your wife’s neighbor,

  a positive test result,

  an itching to leave,

  an itching to stay,

  or any itching where there shouldn’t be any.

  Rub your hands slow over your body,

  feel the valleys, the wrongs. Let misery

  chomp your spine toward collapsing,

  let it fold your whole self double.

  Then you can walk like John Lee Hooker do—

  click shuffle, bent over, nose to the ground,

  wearing a cocked brim felt fedora that wouldn’t dare fall off.

  Then you can think like John Lee do—

  I’m old as victrola,

  gotta buy a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth

  if I want to feel a woman,

  but I can still

  sing better

  than you

  HALLELUJAH WITH YOUR NAME

  I.

  Perhaps I underestimate his importance.

  After all, he was merely a crooked arm, a suit coat

  dripping pressed shine, Old Spice and Wild Turkey

  lending his soul a smell. He was just a flattened

  and knowing hand at the small of my back, he was

  nothing more than bended knees trying to match

  his height to mine. The bartop was slick and glittering

  with something, one leg of the jukebox propped up

  too high on a cardboard square. Ask why

  I remember that he never bothered to take off his

  storm gray Stetson, that a single sweet thread

  of sweat ran down the left side of his face, kissing

  our clasped hands. I was 12, clacking knees, high-top

  All Stars with flap tongues, a wad of grape bubble

  plumping my cheek. He was a friend of my father’s,

  his name wavering now between Willie and Earl.

  He was grizzled and elegant, horrifying man-smell,

  bowing slightly for permission to lead the woman

  in me across a slice of pockmarked wooden floor.

  Daddy grinned and hooted in the face of this crime.

  II.

  Slow dancing is the way sin looks when you hose

  it down and set it upright, and all the time it is

  the considering of further things, the music being

  incidental, it might as well not be there. You can slow

  dance to a dollop of chocolate, a wrinkled shred of silk,

  the hot static of a child’s hair being brushed. Drag slow

  on top of an angry lover’s silence, along the jittery

  borders of a rain ring, on the cluttered sidewalk outside

  wherever you are. You can dance to the arcing brows

  of folks wondering why you have stopped to dance. Under

  the thinnest pretense, you can demand touch. Without

  considering consequence, you can sign your body over.

  III.

  By the time of that first slow dance, I had tasted

  stormwater, head cheese, starch, sweet pickle juice.

  In raw sanctified churches, I was swathed in crinoline

  and dipped, hair first, into whatever wouldn’t kill me.

  I knew how to fight for my life with a bottleneck.

  I had discovered the liquid verb of my hips and had

  gnawed the vinegary meat from the foot of a pig.

  I could slip a thousand coins through the slot

  of a juke, knowing my backbone would respond to

  any song, any old keyed wail from a shattered someone.

  I could exist on unclean things, slippery with fat,

  and crush hugely pregnant roaches with the heel

  of my hand. I dared slow-sputter four-syllable words.

  Daddy taught me to be constantly astonishing.

  IV.

  The man who taught me to slow dance was simply

  my father’s friend, who lifted me from a wobbling

  stool when I nodded yes. He was that first gracious

  sweep, flat laboring feet, slapped smile, awkward

  realizing that a memory was coming to life in his arms.

  The song? A woman was moaning so hard the record

  skipped to save her. She was leaving, thinking

  of leaving or had left, or someone had left her.

  She had nothing left. My partner off-key spittled

  every third word, flashing a gold incisor that made

  me move closer to him. I wanted to get all of him

  over with, to squeeze his scarecrow body through

  and past me. I wanted us history. I knew then why

  it is always the woman who dances backwards,

  numbing her short spine, circling the man’s neck

  with both arms. She is scrambling for a glimpse

  of where she’s been, the yesterday she had before

  he gets hard and confuses hallelujah with her name.

  LITTLE POETRY

  He says I am gumpopper,

  wondrous shoulders,

  evil on the days when I bleed.

  I say take hold of both my hands.

  He speaks cool water on me,

  nudges my mood with a proverb.

  I watch him undress, skin

  unto another skin, and I turn

  away to keep from craving that.

  By the time his hands

  touch my shoulders,

  I am almost insane

  with disappearing,

  and the thunder.

  CAN’T HEAR NOTHING FOR THAT DAMNED TRAIN

  Chaos, all sound and stench, everywhere the delirium

  of the ordinary. Mamie Tuttle holds court on a lopsided

  wooden porch, clearly an afterthought to her house, yelping

  so sideways her gold tooth rattles: Got room in my chair

  if anybody need it, scratching scalp, pressing hair, S5,

  make you look good this Sunday!—all of her rollicking,

  her greasy hands on world hips. For a hot minute, her spiel

  drowns out the Temptations moaning for crazy love from

  beneath a good girl’s window. Lanky boys in worn-through

  sharkskin snag the harmony, croon its bottom while Mamie,

  diseased ankles damned tired now, declares O.K. dammit, $4!

  Her answer is the cringe roll of cars on last rim, the squealed

  lyric of double dutch girls pumping some God outta their legs.

  Despite the sugar noise and veiled shit, you would think we’d

  w
ant out. The dying engineered green of Garfield Park, a planned

  paradise of rust and splinter, is crushed into its corner, wailing

  toward the world and Mamie, who is about to nap and could give

  a damn: There’s someplace better,

  someplace lusher,

  someplace past any reach you can reach.

  Cover your ears.

  Here comes the train.

  That’s where it’s going.

  DRINK, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS

  “Tequila is a pallid flame that passes through walls and soars over tile roofs to allay despair.”

  —Alvaro Mutis

  Sergio was for no shit

  that night. He was serving

  up the blade juice, heavy-handed,

  the sugary gold

  sloshing over the tops

  of much-thumbed tumblers.

  Story was he rinsed

  his glasses in gin to make sure

  the germs were dead.

  Well, no matter. That night

  he was pinpoint focused

  on laying his regulars flat

  with fountains of Cuervo,

  free for the time being

  because he said it was.

  The open mic,

  an odd parade of eggshells

  and desperadoes, had limped

  to its usual anticlimax,

  each poet duly convinced

  that his lines had leapt

  from the cocktail napkin,

  sliced through the din,

  and changed Chicago.

  Now, no more

  of those bare offerings,

  florid lyrics of tomorrow and gray.

  The doors were locked.

  The M.C. was atilt, souvenir bras

  dripped from the ceiling

  and the Johns smelled like snow.

  This was world enough,

  a timed blathering of our sad biographies,

  Playtex as décor,

  and an overwrought

  of fever water spewing

  from the grimy hands

  of an insane Mexican barkeep.

  When we slowed,

  choking on the bitter kick

  as he poured and poured,

  Serge bellowed a thick-tongued

  threat: This ain’t no joke. Drink,

  you motherfuckers.

  He waved a sudden gun,

  a clunky thing that sparked

  snickers until he blasted

  a hole in the ceiling and

  revised our endings,

  smalling our big drunken lives.

  DELTATEACH

  for all my mamas

  delta teach me the sound

  my heart makes when it

  bends over backwards

  to curse at its beat delta got

  church stuffed in size 16,

  carrying my gottahave milk,

  telling me that i can make my

  ownself feel goodjust

  when i’m thinking it might

  take a man to make me feel

  natural

  delta teach me fatback,

  skillet bread, hogshead,

  alaga, drive me crazy with

  warm grease, fatten me up

  so that i can find

  my second mouth

  when my living be broken

  delta help me find the piece

  that can still shout the little bit

  that can still squeeze into

  a shiny thing and go downtown

  where you can

  sing about it, girl, sing about it,

  pray hard over it, lean into it,

  work with it, fry that thang up,

  flip it, cut it loose, set fire

  to it, turn it over, turn it out,

  make it beg, go down on it,

  call it sugar out loud, get wide

  for it, lie to it, lie for it, lie

  with it, but baby, don’t let it kill you.

  delta let me rub her throat

  while she sing she

  three-weave her fingers

  while she sing she

  wiggle like revelation

  while she sing she

  peel back my grinning

  show everybody that lie

  she find underneath there

  she rip out the hooks

  that man done left in my skin

  ignores my pained wailing

  bleedsme

  delta sponge me down with

  pan water dab cheap smellgood

  on my shattered shoulders

  call me sista when she have to

  baby when she want to

  and fool most of the time

  delta drive her mouth all over me

  feeds me pure butter from a

  teaspoon make me come like i

  never have then she sing me some

  aspirin she sing me edged hooch. she

  ignores all those eyes. she take me

  so dancing

  CREATIVELY LOVED

  for Raymond Wood Jr., 1994–1995

  I was a foot tall, charming, tot stupid,

  bump stumbling, a rumble lump of less

  than future. It took me minutes to die,

  my self blurring and curled like a comma

  in leaving, Newport stubs damp candles

  in my hair. Rayie Wood Jr., pesky shard

  in the hip of the world. Why else would

  you lift me above your head, slam me

  to tile, lift me up again by my legs, swing

  me against the closed door wicked enough

  to splinter Wood, call me sugary names,

  oh so sweet bastard me? But I thank you

  father for the patient teaching of screech,

  for drenching my one tooth in blood.

  Thank you daddyman, for the alphabet

  of the floorboards, thank you mother

  for the live matches against me. Thank

  you SHUT father for the ripe THE FUCK

  UP loving in your mouth, thank you for

  YOU LITTLE the slam and the smash me

  BASTARD and for the bounce and the

  rattle, for the drama of cut beginning.

  How else would I learn the huge love in

  red hiss kisses, the shining purpose of me?

  ELEGANTLY ENDING

  for Ella Fitzgerald

  A lyric unravels,

  spins on dizzied axis,

  one syllable slinks

  and becomes several.

  A stark shaft of light

  illuminates a never-over evolution.

  Each exhalation

  excites and concludes

  with a slight upturn

  of phrase that compromises

  the hip, roots fat legs,

  lends such southern heave to torso.

  Mysteries thrive in the belly

  and in the miraculous

  of her throating,

  send two errant verbs

  round ’bout themselves

  and into the keys

  of her spine again.

  It is not for us to know

  her trilling suddenly

  murderous and cringe

  beautiful, inbound.

  Her legs gone.

  A lack of this elegance

  is the end of evolution.

  Consider the soundless hole.

  Over.

  SEX AND MUSIC

  Imagine my disgust at discovering that I am

  actually that readable and uncomplicated,

  that I could find nothing in me worth noting

  except one heat and two ways to release it.

  Music leads to sex leads to music leads to sex.

  If it wasn’t for the clock of music imitating

  the pulse of sexing someone, I could forego

  this lapdance in my own lap. There’s no need

  for that sliver of ice, those chilly silver utensils,

 
; the banshee howl, that two-way mirror,

  the pliable circle of the mouth, Todd Rundgren’s

  Healing, that spread-eagle, the lazy drip of any

  liquid, the ritual reading of Sharon Olds, that

  imprint of your urgent ass marring my wall.

  I can blame you on all this, your drumbeat hip,

  what writhes in your pants. I can’t stop sparking

  what I keep having to douse. Kiss me that deep.

  Turn the air into victim with your arms.

  Dance me till weeping and the beauteous burn.

  MAP RAPPIN’

  for John Coltrane, and forever for Bruce

  I always shudder when I pray.

  Mama say the Lord enters you in stages,

  first like a match lit under your skin,

  then like an animal biting through bone

  with soft teeth. Mama say lie still

  and wait for glory to consume you,

  wrap its way into your map

  like a lover had his finger on paradise,

  knew the way with all his heart, then lost it.

  I always shudder when I pray,

  so your name must be a prayer.

  Saying your name colors my mouth,

  frees loose this river, changes my skin,

  turns my spine to string. I pray all the time now.

  Amen.

  Try not to touch me while I tell this.

  Try not to brush the thick tips of your fingers

  against my throat while my throat moves

  telling this story. Don’t suddenly squeeze

  my bare shoulder or travel your mouth

  along the flat swell of my belly.

  Don’t bite at the hollow in my back,

  whisper touch my ankles,

  or match our skin like spoons.

  Don’t punctuate this rambling sentence

  with your tongue or trace your name

  on the backs of my legs,

  please don’t walk the question

  of your breath along my thighs

  or draw a map on my quivering breastbone

  guiding me to you,

  me to you,

  me to you,

  don’t play me

  that way

  don’t play me

  that way

  the way the saxman plays his woman,

  blowing into her mouth till she cries,

  allowing her no breath of her own.

  Don’t play me that way, baby, the way

  the saxman plays his lady,

  that strangling, soft murder—notes like bullets,

  riffs like knives and the downbeat slapping

  into her. and she sighs.

  into her. and she cries.

  into her.

  and she whines like the night turning.

  Let me sit here on the bar stool sipping something bitter.