Unshuttered ["8. cane, cravats, and corsets tell..."]
cane, cravats, and corsets tell and retell the body’s story the shell we
shroud in guile, romance, and thread i was a doll i was a sleek fool i
was publicly foppish loud as a lit lamp but my shoes, their upturned toes
dust and scuff a negro’s always got nigger somewhere on ’ im all you gots to
do is
Look
They couldn’t let me occur not like this not
this me not my Sunday self not not like upright not like stroll like
matchstick Like la-di-fuckin’-da boy gotta find a crime for you
their rhythm partial to the red air down around my knees
she/point//shriek//point//shriek/she/ the point is i was where i was when i
was there
it’s true my eyes may have swept a woman an hour idea or a
future
i didn’t own she/point/she who knew that
there that boy is that the boy yessir that the boy could be a whole trial
sometimes even christians get necks wrong i was not that boy
i used to twirl a walking stick and dip my crown toward a sun that
relished
my body
but
when we forget that fancy only rolls
one way
some body
reminds
us
Copyright Credit: Patricia Smith, "8: cane, cravats, and corsets tell..." from Unshuttered. Copyright © 2023 by Patricia Smith. Reprinted by permission of TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.
Source: Unshuttered (TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press, 2023)