Excerpt from The Body's Question

SOMETHING LIKE DYING, MAYBE

Last night, it was bright afternoon
Where I wandered. Pale faces all around me.
I walked and walked looking for a door.
For some cast-off garment, looking for myself
In the blank windows and the pale blank faces.

I found my wristwatch from ten years ago
And felt glad awhile.
When it didn’t matter anymore being lost,
The sky clouded over and the pavement went white.
I stared at my hands. Like new leaves,
Light breaking through from behind.

Then I felt your steady breathing beside me
And the mess of blankets where we slept.
I woke, touching ground gently
Like a parachutist tangled in low branches.
All those buildings, those marvelous bodies
Pulled away as though they’d never known me.

GOSPEL: JUAN

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

We crossed
Dressed as soldiers,
Faces painted
Mud green.

The coyotes
That promised
We’d make it, gave us
A straw broom

To drag behind,
Erasing our tracks.
They gave us meat
Drugged for the dogs.

Farther off,
There were engines,
Voices, a light
That swept the ground.

We crossed
On our bellies.
I wonder
If we’ll ever stand up.

CREDULITY

We believe we are giving ourselves away,
And so it feels good,
Our bodies swimming together
In afternoon light, the music
That enters our window as far
From the voices that made it
As our own minds are from reason.

There are whole doctrines on loving.
A science. I would like to know everything
About convincing love to give me
What it does not possess to give. And then
I would like to know how to live with nothing.
Not memory. Nor the taste of the words
I have willed you whisper into my mouth.

SHADOW POEM

You know me
But the gauze that fetters the earth
Keeps you from knowing

We were souls together once
Wave after wave of ether
Alive outside of time

I’m still there
Though twice I curled
Into a speck-sized marvel

And waited
In the wet earth of you
Briefly human

You fear everything
And live by a single
Inconstant light

Listening
Hearing nothing
A radio stuck between stations

The second time
I played giddy music
On my blinking heart

Now I watch the dumb machine
Of your body loving
With the loveless wedge of you

That made me

When I want to tell you something
I say it in a voice
The shadow of water

I don’t wake you
But the part of you
That’s still like me

That rises above your body
When your body
Sinks into itself

The part that doesn’t
Belong to you
Knows what it hears

You are not the only one
Alive like that

Copyright 2003 by Tracy K. Smith. All rights reserved.