Teahouse of the Almighty

by Patricia Smith

  sure of my practiced vows,

  already addicted to the sanctity of bondage.

  I was an unfurled ballad in a scoop-necked

  sheath carved of sugar. And him on my arm,

  grinning like a bear, all sinew and swagger.

  Bibles were everywhere. Dizzied by rote,

  I stared at the gold rope around my finger.

  He owned me.

  And that felt nice.

  That felt right.

  the first time i hit her

  I thought the loose tooth a temporary nightmare

  the second time i hit her

  He cried himself to sleep, and that was nice,

  that was right

  the third time i hit her

  He counted my scars and whispered never again

  baby never again

  When i’d die without you

  turned to i’ll kill you if you ever leave me

  I bristled like a hound in heat, I didn’t

  understand the not being aroused, when

  let’s get away

  turned to

  you’ll never get away

  such heat rippled my

  belly such crave in me screeching walk run run run

  run

  i etched a thin line into the throat of her running

  run

  i stalked streets just a breath behind her

  run

  i shattered our son’s skull with a shotgun

  run

  i wanted her dead.

  My first thought as he jammed the

  still smoking barrel into my breastbone

  her first thought

  as the blade mapped my chest, the

  hammer sliced the air toward my hair

  the bullet pushed me through a plate glass window

  my last thought you won’t believe this

  my last thought

  you really won’t believe this

  my last thought

  was

  he must really

  love me

  LOOK AT ’EM GO

  for my granddaughter Mikaila

  Hard-sewn, soft-belly, huff, hip swing,

  teeny woman catapult, dings in the walls

  of your body. I know your scars, badges

  earned in the grave pursuit of science—

  jump rope whips along a curve of calf,

  toes stubbed purple, tender uncolored

  patches of skin woven shut over your

  small traumas. Wily dervish, you flip,

  hurtle, fly, daily rattle your soft spine,

  send your bones to the wailing places.

  This is play in the age of Grandma, who

  knocked those buildings down? This is

  8 years old in the age of could-die-soon.

  This is life as collision and scrape, hard

  lessons in the poetics of risk. Daring

  the world to harm us, you pull hard

  on my hand. Grandma, let’s run! We laugh

  and trip as the sidewalk sniffs our skin

  and stars along our path flame shut.

  Die fast, die slow, die giggling, die anyway.

  Our speed tempts the Reaper as I shelter

  you in this first death, the loss of our throats.

  STOP THE PRESSES

  My job is to draw the pictures no one can voice,

  to soothe and bellow toward the numbed heart,

  to breathe in your chronicles, discuss them out

  in lines weak enough for you to read and swallow.

  My mouth is a jumble of canine teeth, I bite only

  at the official whistle. My job is sexy leads for the

  bones clattering in your closet, to sing you sated

  each night with a forgettable soundtrack of paper

  and ink. I am neat, easily folded, a sifter of truth

  born to be burned. I count your dead, fathom their

  stories, bless them with long, flexible histories

  and their final names. There are no soft stanzas

  in this city of curb sleep and murdered children.

  We need soft words for hard things, this silk

  brushing the inevitability of rock. Birth truth in

  this way, just once. Craft the news and overcome

  all that you ever were—a reason to turn the page.

  WHAT YOU PRAY TOWARD

  “The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.”

  —Malcolm Muggeridge, 1966

  I.

  Hubbie 1 used to get wholly pissed when I made

  myself come. I’m right here!, he’d sputter, blood

  popping to the surface of his fuzzed cheeks,

  goddamn it, I’m right here! By that time, I was

  in no mood to discuss the myriad merits of my

  pointer, or to jam the brakes on the express train

  slicing through my blood. It was easier to suffer

  the practiced professorial huff, the hissed invectives

  and the cold old shoulder, liver-dotted, quaking

  with rage. Shall we pause to bless professors and

  codgers and their bellowed, unquestioned ownership

  of things? I was sneaking time with my own body.

  I know I signed something over, but it wasn’t that.

  II.

  No matter how I angle this history, it’s weird,

  so let’s just say Bringing Up Baby was on the telly

  and suddenly my lips pressing against

  the couch cushions felt spectacular and I thought

  wow this is strange, what the hell, I’m 30 years old,

  am I dying down there is this the feel, does the cunt

  go to heaven first, ooh, snapped river, ooh shimmy

  I had never had it never knew, oh I clamored and

  lurched beneath my little succession of boys I cried

  writhed hissed, ooh wee, suffered their flat lapping

  and machine-gun diddling their insistent c’mon girl

  c’mon until I memorized the blueprint for drawing

  blood from their shoulders, until there was nothing

  left but the self-satisfied liquidy snore of he who has

  rocked she, he who has made she weep with script.

  But this, oh Cary, gee Katherine, hallelujah Baby,

  the fur do fly, all gush and kaboom on the wind.

  III.

  Don’t hate me because I am multiple, hurtling.

  As long as there is still skin on the pad of my finger,

  as long as I’m awake, as long as my (new) husband’s

  mouth holds out, I am the spinner, the unbridled,

  the bellowing freak. When I have emptied him,

  he leans back, coos, edges me along, keeps wondering

  count. He falls to his knees in front of it, marvels

  at my yelps and carousing spine, stares unflinching

  as I bleed spittle onto the pillows.

  He has married a witness.

  My body bucks, slave to its selfish engine,

  and love is the dim miracle of these little deaths,

  fracturing, speeding for the surface.

  IV.

  We know the record. As it taunts us, we have giggled,

  considered stopwatches, little laboratories. Somewhere

  beneath the suffering clean, swathed in eyes and silver,

  she came 134 times in one hour. I imagine wires holding

  her tight, her throat a rattling window. Searching scrubbed

  places for her name, I find only reams of numbers. I ask

  the quietest of them:

  V.

  Are we God?

  WHAT MEN DO WITH THEIR MOUTHS

  for cr avery

  cue the frenzied combo of molar and spit, his tongue

  touches every chroma on its way to blue. he deftly

  conjures washboards and rubber, even suburban

 
girls lie still for the twinging, the humid reckoning.

  i want to coax last night’s corona from his chin, rub

  my index finger along the surface of his laugh, pull

  it open to check the throat’s slick road, something

  illegal’s going on down there, the sweet keening

  of ancient instruments, wonder boy opens beauteous

  and words become both otherwise and everything.

  DREAM DEAD DADDY WALKING

  You don’t have to be asleep to dream. At any time,

  cue the untruths. You can believe, for instance,

  that your dead father isn’t dead anymore.

  There is the doorbell clanging and your one-year-old

  screeching Granddaddy!, lurching and running

  to the banister to risk his life looking over,

  and yes, there is a curving staircase, partially awash

  in sun, and your father skipping stairs,

  grinning gold tooth, growling Hey Meathead

  to his yelping grandson. Your unslept story freezes

  right here, with his bony brown face upturned,

  you and your leaping baby looking down at him.

  The clock locks on this.

  The raucous welcome stops, he does not take

  another step, nothing moves but his face,

  slipping out of sun into dead again. I am alone

  in my office, terrified of conjuring him,

  but there is the clanging, the boy screeching,

  the gold tooth, those slats of June, the son,

  the father, the daughter seeing all of what has

  already happened happening,

  and the soft remembered thud of wingtips.

  WRITING EXERCISE BREATHING OUTSIDE MY BINDER

  I’m as trapped as a housefly

  in a vagrant’s unwashed beard.

  Yesterday’s stinging snapshots:

  fatty salted meat grilling madly,

  a dying bulb sputtering heat and speckles of light,

  Mama’s keloid-scarred cheek suffering pink foundation.

  To balance that then with this now,

  I gulp potent cocktails

  of fluoxetine and chardonnay, and confess

  that I am partial to crying jags

  and this thing James Taylor coos:

  Here comes another gray morning,

  a not so good morning after all. . . .

  I itch that scratch

  before the refrain of the real

  fades and forces me back

  to my $50-a-week white woman.

  Our current topic:

  I collapse beneath touches.

  What rises me is the relentless

  march of seconds, guffawing weirdly,

  all dressed in their heaven-bound church hats

  and ripped little gowns.

  THE THRILL IS ON

  Inspired by the B.B. King/Eric Clapton video “Riding with the King”

  Side touching side, they lean one into the other,

  hugging guitars tighter than a wise man holds

  onto a wandering gal, which is tight as he can clutch

  without actually chaining her to the slippery surface

  of his heart. The Lord promised to age B.B. the way all

  bluesmen age, decorating him with a sweet snag

  in his hip, a solo lecherous eye, and an abundance

  of tales peppered and fueled by ’ssissippi sun and just

  one more fried something—I know, I know, it ain’t no

  good for me, but hell, I’m from down South, and down

  there grease is a damn food group. For so long, he was

  grand marshal for the calling of the catfish. Now history

  threatens to overwhelm, pulling him to earth with pills

  and needles, diluting the crimson kick in his blood.

  I didn’t want to see the hasty Afro grow silvery sparse,

  didn’t need his sugar sickness unwrapped on prime time,

  certainly didn’t ever want to hear the blue grunt falter

  as if, rehashing his woe, he had inhaled a pocket of air.

  Once, in a cluttered Newport trailer, B.B. leaned forward,

  touched a hammy hand to my forehead, insisted I was

  hiding a piece of some angel. The voltage left his chapped

  palm, sliced through like hooch, and settled restlessly

  in the south of me. They cast the most remarkable spells,

  these blue fathers. See how the guitar connects directly

  to the belly. They dazzle with sharkskin and gold incisor,

  work roots and moaning conjures, teach Northern children

  the waning language of screen doors and spent matches.

  Rotund on 2/4 time, impossibly sexy with all that misery

  in him, B.B. laughs with his mouth wide open, serves up

  a glimpse of old glitter, the odd pork sliver. The two of them

  climb growl-first into that Caddy to cruise streets saddled

  with old Negro names, streets where loose women beckon,

  brothers check out the rims and storefronts spit glass teeth.

  B.B. fills that backseat again and again in a circular tuxedo,

  pearl buttons popping, bow tie lost forever under all that neck.

  Craving my blue daddy, I scramble into that car, grab hold.

  Clapton, looking like everybody’s picture of Jesus, floors it,

  hurtling three old fools toward a common key, an enviable end.

  BLUES THROUGH 2 BONE

  Her daddy was ashed grooved hands,

  tree trunk man, rock in the A.M.E.

  and haul a righteous hymn all the way

  up from his skinned toes home.

  His shrine at the kitchen table,

  dousing Mama’s overwhupped

  starches with Tabasco fire,

  gotta make it worth the biting,

  peppered heat stinkin’ an inch

  from all of his skin. Baby girl

  he’d whisper, baby girl baby girl

  baby girl, splintered palm pressed

  into her belly, kicking hard denims

  away from his ankles, losing

  his thumbs in her hair, clawing loose

  Sunday plaits, saying with muscle clench

  and crunchy candy that she was

  wide shoulder pretty, sweet leg

  double dutch jumping pretty,

  more color than was ever even necessary.

  Underneath a pissed blanket, she waited

  for teacher. She loved the rough universe

  of his left hand, and how he said she was so black

  he needed directions to get to her

  in the dark.

  FIREMAN

  Some days he’d slowly spin his dizzying

  street corner arc, a circle he swore

  was defined by angels. And they is black

  ones, too! he’d declare, never daring

  beyond heavenly prescribed boundary.

  Fireman wrecked Otis Redding lyric,

  spewed misaligned gospel, regaled us

  with his tales of recent visits to a hell

  that was preparing to receive us all.

  Sizzling Chi days, he’d whirl furious,

  shower the one or two feet beyond

  himself with stinging spittle, preach

  and pontificate through the blur. After

  sudden stops, he’d lean against the bus

  shelter to undizzy. Lawd ham mercy, he’d

  moan, while the world turned upside

  in and Mama and I cut a road around him.

  Long time before, Fireman had raced

  face-first into a blaze trying to save

  something belonged to him, a dog

  or a woman or some other piece of life,

  and an explosion had blown his face

  straight back, you know, sometimes

  I hate words, they don’t know how
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  to say anything, imagine that I am digging

  my fingers deep into the clay of my face

  and pulling, watch how my eyes get,

  how they can’t stop seeing the last thing

  they saw, his eyelashes gone, eyebrows

  gone, everything on his head headed

  backwards, like it was trying to get

  away from him. Maps all over his skin,

  maps for little lost people, everybody

  this way, back, his nose smashed flat

  and headed back, back, smoke-dimmed

  teeth tiny tiles in his mouth, can’t pull

  bulbous pink lips together because

  of skin fused to skin, no end to that stiff

  horrible smile. In my dream, I rest the full

  of my hand against his fuming torso,

  daring it a place there, chanting ice.

  Not knowing this sudden love, Fireman bolts

  and resumes his dance, whirling, waiting,

  charred limbs outstretched. From his

  monstrous mouth, wrong Otis strains

  to be louder than that November day,

  that bone heat, those shattering windows.

  PSYCHE!

  “Piscataway, NJ (AP)—Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV.”

  —Dec. 12 in New York Newsday, the Toronto Globe and Mail and hundreds of newspapers around the world

  “Rutgers researchers say new drug stops HIV in its tracks.”

  —Washington Blade, Dec. 17

  “New class of AIDS drugs ‘could be it.’”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune, Dec. 18

  “Press stories in mid Dec. 2004 about an AIDS breakthrough from Rutgers University and elsewhere were exaggerated in the media.”

  —AIDS Treatment News

  many more than that many,

  this hallelujah, this bruise Jesus

  all over purpled ankle, more than

  this scrubbed silver and next needle

  this whole heart in an african hand

  much more than these drum digits

  this possible this wait a minute what

  does this say this page 47, more than

  this mad, this unlatched, this bandage

  and gut swirling, what stiff number

  was the blanket, scissored felt

  and eye buttons, glitter elmer glued

  to gone outlines, names too simple

  to be so hard pronounced. more

  than that, even more than conjured

  million, this cock/tail, this twitch

  and drool, this vomit, this legislation.