SMITH, Tracy K.

The Good Life

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.


Interrogative 3. Leroy, Alabama, 2005

There's still a pond behind your mother's old house,

Still a stable with horses, a tractor rusted and stuck

Like a trophy in mud. And the red house you might

Have thrown stones at still stands on stilts up the dirt road.

A girl from the next town over rides in to lend us

Her colt, cries when one of us kicks it with spurs.

Her father wants to buy her a trailer, let her try her luck

In the shows. They stay for dinner under the tent

Your brother put up for the Fourth. Firebugs flare

And vanish. I am trying to let go of something.

My heart cluttered with names that mean nothing.

Our racket races out to the darkest part of the night.

The woods catch it and send it back.


Einstein’s Mother

Was he mute a while,

or all tears. Did he raise

his hands to his ears so

he could scream scream

scream. Did he eat only

with his fists. Did he eat

as if something inside of him

would never be fed. Did he

arch his back and hammer

his heels into the floor

the minute there was

something he sought.

And did you feel yourself

caught there, wanting

to let go, to run, to

be called back to wherever

your two tangled souls

had sprung from. Did you ever

feel as though something

were rising up inside you.

A fire-white ghost. Did you

feel pity. And for whom.