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Clint Smith is staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the narrative nonfiction book How the Word is Passed as well as the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Smith grew up Catholic in New Orleans, but after Hurricane Katrina, his family fled to Houston, Texas. He taught high school English in Maryland where he was named the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year. He then pursued doctoral work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society, earning his PhD in 2020 with his dissertation focusing on race, mass incarceration, and education. Since 2021, he is the host of Crash Course's Black American History series.
FaceTime
On another night
in a hotel
in a room
in a city
flanked by all
that is unfamiliar
I am able to move
my finger along
a glass screen
once across
once vertical
& in seconds
see your mother
smiling in a room
that is our own
that is now so
far away but
also not so far
away at all
& she can place
the small screen
near her belly
& when I speak
I can see you
moving beneath
her skin as if you
knew that this
distance was
only temporary
& what a small
yet profound
joy it is to be some-
where that is not
with you but to
still be with you
& see your feet
dance beneath
her rib cage like
you knew we’d
both be dancing
together soon.
the drone
the drone was once a scrap of metal the drone looks as if it might be a toy the drone is not a toy the drone could have been something other than a killing machine the drone could have been a house the drone could have been a spoon the drone could have been a swing the drone does not know who it is going to kill next the drone is going to kill next the drone has learned to disguise itself as a shard of sky the drone’s soft hum is a disembodied echo the drone was mistaken for a star once the drone renders itself celestial the drone scoffs at sovereignty the drone asks what is a border if you can fly right over it? the drone was built by a man the drone killed a man & a woman & a child the drone killed a child & did not see her face the drone does not see a face the drone sees a body & then the body is gone.
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