Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah Read online

  SHOULDA BEEN JIMI SAVANNAH

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Patricia Smith

  COVER AND BOOK DESIGN by Linda Koutsky

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH © RIA Novosti

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © Rachel Eliza Griffiths

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CIP INFORMATION

  Smith, Patricia, 1955–

  Shoulda been Jimi Savannah / Patricia Smith.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56689-367-1

  1. Title.

  PS3569.M537839S56 2012

  811'.54—DC22

  2011029282

  135798642

  FIRST EDITION | FIRST PRINTING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to thank the editors of the following publications where these works first appeared: Asheville Poetry Review: “Still Life with Toothpick,” “Before Orphan Unearthed the Mirror”; Best American Essays 2011: “Pearl, Upward,” (comprised of the poems “How a Mama Begins Sometimes,” “Annie Pearl, Upward” and “June 25, 1955”) Best American Poetry 2011: “Motown Crown”; Bop, Strut, and Dance: A Post-Blues Form for New Generations: “Annie Pearl’s ArethaBops”; Chautauqua Literary Journal: “Thief of Tongues”; City of Big Shoulders—An Anthology of Chicago Poetry: “Chicago”; Crab Orchard Review: “Pearl, Upward”; Cutthroat: “Carnie,” “Next. Next.” “Shedding”; Gargoyle: “Because,” “Dear Jimmy Connoll”; Granta: “A Colored Girl Will Slice You If You Talk Wrong about Motown”; Killer Verse—Poems of Mayhem and Murder: “Speculation”; PMS—Poem/Memoir/Story: “An All-Purpose Product”; Poetry: “Hip-Hop Ghazal”; Rattle: “Tavern. Tavern. Tavern. Shuttered tavern,” “Motown Crown”; Reverie—Midwest African-American Literature: “Doubledutch,” “Closest to Heaven”; River Styx: “Tenzone,” “Ooo, Baby, Baby”; Roanoke Review: “His for the Taking”; Sugar House Review: “First Friction,” “Laugh Your Troubles Away!”; Tin House: “Baby of the Mistaken Hue”; Word Warriors—35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution: “Asking for a Heart Attack.”

  Special thanks to Kwame Dawes, Cave Canem, the National Book Foundation, and the enduring light of Gwendolyn Brooks. She taught me Chicago.

  For all the families that have understood, nurtured, and sustained me.

  And for Bruce and Mikaila, always.

  Contents

  1.OLD BACKDROPS DARK

  How Mamas Begin Sometimes

  Still Life with Toothpick

  Keep Saying Heaven and It Will

  Before Orphan Unearthed the Mirror

  Fixing on the Next Star

  One Way to Run from It

  Annie Pearl, Upward

  Otis and Annie, Annie and Otis

  June 25, 1955

  Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah

  Chicago

  Tenzone

  3315 W. Washington, 3A

  Alliance

  2.WE SHINED LIKE THE NEW THINGS WE WERE

  A Colored Girl Will Slice You If You Talk Wrong about Motown

  Annie Pearl’s Arethabops

  True That

  Shedding

  Laugh Your Troubles Away!

  The Boss of Me

  3.LEARNING TO SUBTRACT

  Ooo, Baby, Baby

  First Friction

  Speculation

  Jumping Doubledutch

  Minus One. Minus One More.

  And Now the News: Tonight the Soldiers

  Have Soul and Die

  Next. Next.

  4.MAD AT MY WHOLE DAMN FACE

  Ain’t but One Way Heaven Makes Sense

  Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered tavern,

  Sanctified

  An All-Purpose Product

  Baby of the Mistaken Hue

  Because

  What Garfield Park Kept Saying

  To Keep from Saying Dead

  13 Ways of Looking at 13

  Dear Jimmy Connoll

  Carnie

  Guess Who’s Closest to Heaven

  His for the Taking

  Dirty Diana

  An Open Letter to Joseph Peter Naras

  An Open Letter to Joseph Peter Naras, Take 2

  5.WAIT

  An Open Letter to Joseph Peter Naras, Take 3

  Asking for a Heart Attack

  Hip-hop Ghazal

  Looking to See How the Eyes Inhabit Dark, Wondering about Light

  Thief of Tongues

  Motown Crown

  He said true things, but called them by wrong names.

  —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

  1

  OLD BACKDROPS DARK

  HOW MAMAS BEGIN SOMETIMES

  For my mother, Annie Pearl Smith

  Raging tomgirl, blood dirt streaking her thick ankles

  and bare feet, she is always running, screech raucous,

  careening, dare and games in her clothesline throat.

  Playing like she has to play to live, she shoves at what

  slows her, steamrolls whatever damn thing won’t move.

  Aliceville, Alabama’s no fool. It won’t get in her way.

  Where’s that girl going? Past slant sag porches, pea shuck,

  twangy box guitars begging under purple dayfall. Combs

  spitting sparks, hair parted and scalps scratched, mules

  trembling the back road, the marbled stares of elders

  fixed on checkerboards. Cursed futures crammed into

  cotton pouches with pinches of bitterroot, the horrid parts

  of meat stewed sweet and possible. And still, whispers

  about the disappeared, whole souls lost in the passage.

  Frolicking blindly, flailing tough with cousins, sisters,

  but running blaze, running on purpose, bounding toward

  away. She can’t tag this fever, but she believes it knows

  her, owns her in a way religion should. Toes tap, feet

  flatten out inside the sin of shoes. She is most times

  asking something, steady asking, needing to know,

  needing to know now, taking wing on that blue restless

  that drums her. Twisting on rusty hinge, that old porch door

  whines for one long second ’bout where she was.

  But that girl gone.

  STILL LIFE WITH TOOTHPICK

  For my father, Otis Douglas Smith,

  and the grandparents I never knew

  Maybe his father grunted, brusque and focused as he

  brawled with the steering, maybe there was enough time

  for a flashed invective, some hot-patched dalliance with God.

  Then the Plymouth, sounding like a cheated-on woman,

  screamed into hurtled revolt and cracked against a tree.

  Bone rammed through shoulder, functions imploded,

  compounded pulse spat slow thread into the road.

  His small stuttering mother’s body braided up sloppy

  with foliage and windshield, his daddy became

  the noon’s smeared smile. For hours, they simply rained.

  It is Arkansas, so the sky was a cerulean str
etch, the sun

  a patient wound. The boxy sedan smoldered and spat

  along the blistered curve while hounds and the skittering

  sniffed the lumping red river and blood birds sliced lazy over

  the wreck, patiently waiting for the feast to cool. The sheriff

  sidled up, finally, rolled a toothpick across his bottom teeth,

  weighed his options. It was ’round lunchtime, the meatloaf

  on special, that slinky waitress on call. He climbed

  back into his cruiser and drove off, his mind clear. Awfully nice

  of those poor nigras to help out. Damned if they didn’t

  just drip right into the dirt. Pretty much buried themselves.

  KEEP SAYING HEAVEN AND IT WILL

  Otis is orphan in a very slow way. Relatives orbit the folded him, paint his parents to breath with stories that take the long way around trees, stories about the time before the two of them set out in the rumbling Plymouth, going somewhere, not getting there.

  Otis is orphan in a very one way. Only one him. Only the solo with only happy stories to hear, no one says car. No one says crash or never or dead now. Everyone says heaven. They pat his head with flat hands, say heaven with all their teeth, say heaven with their shredding silk throats. They say heaven heaven heaven while their eyes rip days down.

  Otis is orphan in a very wide way. They feed him dripping knots of fatback, bowlfuls of peppered collards, cheap chicken pieces sizzled thick and doughy, stewed shards of swine. They dip bread in bowls of melted butter, fry everything, okra and tomatoes, fish skin, gizzards, feet. And the women shovel sugar and coconut meat into baking pans, slosh sweet cream into bowls and stir and bake and it is all everything for him for his little empty gut. They feed him enough for two other people, though no one says two other people.

  Finally someone says bodies. Something about the souls having left them and thank God for that. Someone says maybe just one casket. He is eating peaches drifting in a syrup. They think he is a little boy too overloved to hear. But he knows days. And this new sound, orphan, which means that mama and daddy are too close to be pulled apart. They are in one pretty place. But only one him, too adored and fattened. There will be a home for them to come back to. He is widening, practicing with his arms. He will be their first warm wall.

  BEFORE ORPHAN UNEARTHED THE MIRROR

  He was

  always told that he looked like everyone, everything—

  his mama’s brother and sister, that loopy

  cockeyed chicken, that droop-tittied store girl.

  Nosy folks even said he resembled Earl Lee’s

  circling mule, or that crumpled picture of Jesus

  stapled to the kitchen. When you are not in

  the way that he was not, no one admits a root.

  Everyone had a hand or paw on him, steady

  testifying to the miracle of his standing,

  his dogged insistence upon breath. So one

  morning he just up and said good-bye.

  He swept his eyes slow over the spider

  cracks swallowing the crop, the toppled milk

  cans and slivered barn roof, his uncle’s flat

  face, the pummeled tops of his own shoes.

  He said good-bye to a shred of his father

  folded into the trilling heart of a tree. I’m

  leaving for Chicago he told his aunt and uncle

  and they didn’t even try hiding their hallelujah.

  All his nose, hands, and stride ever did were

  remind them of dead. They hated telling him

  how he looked like anything else, everything

  else. They were tired of pretending that his face,

  scratched and black, wasn’t a record that just

  kept on skipping, playing that, that song.

  FIXING ON THE NEXT STAR

  Between 1916 and 1970, more than half a million African-Americans left the South and migrated to Chicago.

  Mamas go quietly crazy, dizzied by the possibilities

  of a kitchen, patiently plucking hairs from the skin

  of supper. Swinging children from thick forearms,

  they hum stanzas riddled with Alabama hue and promises

  Jesus may have made. Homes swerve on foundations

  while, inside, the women wash stems and shreds of syrup

  from their palms and practice contented smiles,

  remembering that it’s a sin to damn this ritual or foul

  the heat-sparkled air with any language less than prayer.

  And they wait for their loves, men of marbled shoulders

  and exploded nails, their faces grizzled landscapes

  of scar and descent. These men stain every room

  they enter, drag with them a stench of souring iron.

  The dulled wives narrow their eyes, busy themselves

  with clanging and stir, then feed the sweating

  soldiers whole feasts built upon okra and the peppered

  necks of chickens. After the steam dies, chewing

  is all there is—the slurp of spiced oil, the crunch

  of bone, suck of marrow. And then the conversation,

  which never changes, even over the children’s squeals:

  They say it’s better up there, it begins, and it is always

  the woman who says this, and the man lowers his head

  to the table and feels the day collapse beneath his shirt.

  ONE WAY TO RUN FROM IT

  The damned boll weevil hisses his good-bye

  while cypresses drip low in steamed salute

  and satchel-toting travelers multiply,

  affixed to that bright dream—the absolute

  reversal of their root. Their gospel hum

  dissuades the Delta dog, his resolute

  pursuit of traitors’ souls. The city’s drum,

  the new unyielding, slaps old backdrops dark.

  Chicago, frigid siren, murmurs Come

  while hiding how she fails—December’s stark

  and violent entry into bone, the ways

  a factory’s drone can siphon every spark

  of will. She boldly lures them with clichés:

  the gilded path, the blur of black and white.

  Seduced, they set their Southern pasts ablaze.

  Intent on fresh religions, taking flight

  without their wings, they’re stunned in hurtling seats.

  This train moans in a way that ain’t quite right.

  ANNIE PEARL, UPWARD

  Chicago. She’s heard the craving out loud, the tales of where money runs like water and after you arrive it takes—what, a minute?—to forget that Alabama ever held sweet for you.

  She wants to find a factory that works ritual into her knuckles. She’s never heard a siren razor the dark. She wants Lucky Strikes, a dose of high life every Friday, hard lessons from a jukebox. Wants to wave bye to her mama. All she needs is a bus ticket, a brown riveted case to hold her gray dress, and a waxed bag crammed with smashed slices of white bread and fat fried slabs of perch. With the whole of her chest, she knows what she’s been running toward.

  Apple cheek and glory gap-tooth fills the window of the Greyhound. For the upcoming, she has hot-combed her hair into shiver strings and donned a fresh-stitched skirt that wrestles with her curves. This deception is what the city asks. Her head is full and hurting with future until the bus arrives. She stumbles forth with all she owns, wanting to be romanced by some sudden thunder. She tries not to see the brown folks—the whipcloth shoe shiners, the bag carriers—staring at her, searching for some sign, aching for a smell of where she came from.

  How does a city sway when you’ve never seen it before? It’s months before she realizes that no one knows her name. No one says Annie Pearl and means it.

  She crafts a life that is dimmer than she’d hoped, in a tenement with walls pressing in hard and fat roaches, sluggish with Raid, dropping into her food, writhing on the mattress of h
er Murphy bed. In daytime, she works in a straight line with other women, her hands moving without her. Repeat. Repeat. When her evenings are breezy and free and there is jiggling in her purse, she looks for music that hurts, cool slips of men in sharkskin suits, a little something to scorch her throat. Drawn to the jukebox, she punches one letter, one number, and “This Bitter Earth” punches her back, with its sad indigo spin. Dinah settles like storm over her shoulders. And she weeps when she hears what has happened to homemade guitars. How they’ve forgotten to need the Southern moon.

  OTIS AND ANNIE, ANNIE AND OTIS

  My parents, then

  She’s a gum-crackin’, bowlegged, church-decent gal, raised up,

  looks like, by a mama who prayed and aimed her toward right.

  I feel a rumbling ’neath that skirt tho, some rhythm of city

  she left Alabama with, a little bit of Chicago that chile

  just couldn’t keep outta her strut. Careful with this one, Otis,

  cause that gold flashin’ in her mouth ain’t intended for God.

  I’ll dress like a real upright Christian for a few days, let her see

  me sharp and crease up and smellin’ sweet. I’ll say Annie

  like it’s the first word I learned and the last one I’m gon’ say.

  But I won’t be crossing the line, having that woman think

  I’m the marryin’ kind. She start dreamin’ on a white dress

  and babies wearin’ my face. Lawd, that ain’t what I want.

  Is there a life outside of Jesus? Then that’s what I want,

  at least for a few days. Nights. I wanna put my hair up,

  pour myself into something shiny, open my mouth and say

  what I feel like sayin’, for a change. Gon’ buy me a gold dress

  with pearl buttons, a split up both sides. Cause I ain’t a child

  no more, hanging onto Mama Ethel’s hand. Next time you see

  me, you won’t know who you’re staring at, no way you look right

  past me. I’m an up-North woman now. It’s about time Annie

  Pearl growed up, found work that ain’t in dirt, learned some city

  words. Don’t want nobody calling me country, folks thinkin’