Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She is a four-time individual National Poetry Slam champion and appeared in the 1996 documentary SlamNation, which followed various poetry slam teams as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon. Patricia Smith is hailed as the first African-American woman to publish a weekly metro column for the Boston Globe. Her many accomplishments include a Guggenheim fellowship, acceptance as a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, and two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. A selection of Smith's poetry was produced as a one-woman play by Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcott and performed at both Boston University Playwrights Theater and the historic Trinidad Theater Workshop. Smith talks about how she started writing poetry, saying, "I got introduced to poetry via the stage, where there isn’t a place to crawl behind the language."The scene at her first Chicago slam poetry night (where she performed her poems for the first time) became Smith's social circle as well as her recreational exercise, but after performing for a while, people began to view Smith's poems as literature rather than just performance. These people challenged Smith to make a commitment to her writing.

Ethel's Sestina

Ethel Freeman's body sat for days in her wheelchair outside the New Orleans Convention Center. Her son Herbert, who had assured his mother that help was on the way, was forced to leave her there once she died.

Gon’ be obedient in this here chair,

gon’ bide my time, fanning against this sun.

I ask my boy, and all he says is Wait.

He wipes my brow with steam, says I should sleep.

I trust his every word. Herbert my son.

I believe him when he says help gon’ come.

Been so long since all these suffrin’ folks come

to this place. Now on the ground ’round my chair,

they sweat in my shade, keep asking my son

could that be a bus they see. It’s the sun

foolin’ them, shining much too loud for sleep,

making us hear engines, wheels. Not yet. Wait.

Lawd, some folks prayin’ for rain while they wait,

forgetting what rain can do. When it come,

it smashes living flat, wakes you from sleep,

eats streets, washes you clean out of the chair

you be sittin’ in. Best to praise this sun,

shinin’ its dry shine. Lawd have mercy, son,

is it coming? Such a strong man, my son.

Can’t help but believe when he tells us, Wait.

Wait some more. Wish some trees would block this sun.

We wait. Ain’t no white men or buses come,

but look—see that there? Get me out this chair,

help me stand on up. No time for sleepin’,

cause look what’s rumbling this way. If you sleep

you gon’ miss it. Look there, I tell my son.

He don’t hear. I’m ’bout to get out this chair,

but the ghost in my legs tells me to wait,

wait for the salvation that’s sho to come.

I see my savior’s face ’longside that sun.

Nobody sees me running toward the sun.

Lawd, they think I done gone and fell asleep.

They don't hear Come.

Come.

Ain’t but one power make me leave my son.

I can’t wait, Herbert. Lawd knows I can’t wait.

Don’t cry, boy, I ain’t in that chair no more.

Wish you coulda come on this journey, son,

seen that ol’ sweet sun lift me out of sleep.

Didn’t have to wait. And see my golden chair?

5 p.m., Tuesday, August 23, 2005

"Data from an Air Force reserve unit reconnaissance...along with observations from the Bahamas and nearby ships...indicate the broad low pressure area over the southeastern Bahamas has become organized enough to be classified as tropical depression twelve." - NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER

A muted thread of gray light hovering ocean,

becomes throat, pulls in wriggle, anemone, kelp,

widens with the want of it. I become

a mouth thrashing hair, an overdone eye. How dare

the water belittle my thirst, treat me as just

another

small

disturbance,

try to feed me

from the bottom of its hand?

I will require praise,

unbridled winds to define my body,

a crime behind my teeth

because

every woman begins as weather,

sips slow thunder, knows her hips. Every woman

harbors a chaos, can

wait for it, straddling a fever.

For now,

I console myself with small furies

those dips in my dawning system. I pull in

a bored breath. The brine shivers.

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