LOOK AT ‘EM GO
By Patricia Smith

For 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-
jumprope 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.

© Patricia Smith. Used with permission of the author.

Copyright © 1997-2007 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

HOME | CONTACT | NEXT POEM