Poetry Wednesday: Interrogative, and a New Poet Laureate

Congratulations to America's new Poet Laureate! Here is a poem from her book Duende.

Interrogative

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1. Falmouth, Massachusetts, 1972

Oak table, knotted legs, the chirp

And scrape of tines to mouth.

Four children, four engines

Of want. That music.

What did your hand mean to smooth

Across the casket of your belly?

What echoed there, if not me—tiny body

Afloat, akimbo, awake or at rest?

Every night you fed the others

Bread leavened with the grains

Of your own want. How

Could you stand me near you,

In you, jump and kick tricking

The heart, when what you prayed for

Was my father’s shadow, your name

In his dangerous script, an envelope

Smelling of gun-powder, bay rum,

Someone to wrestle, sing to, question,

Climb?

                        2. Interstate 101 South, California, 1981

Remember the radio, the Coca-Cola sign

Phosphorescent to the left, bridge

After bridge, as though our lives were

Engineered simply to go? And so we went

Into those few quiet hours

Alone together in the dark, my arm

On the rest beside yours, our lights

Pricking at fog, tugging us patiently

Forward like a needle through gauze.

Night held us like a house.

Sometimes an old song

Would fill the car like a ghost.

                                    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. 

                        4. But let’s say you’re alive again—

Your hands are long and tell your age.

You hold them there, twirling a bent straw,

And my reflection watches, hollow-faced,

Not trying to hide. The waiters make it seem

Like Cairo. Back and forth shouting

That sharp language. And for the first time

I tell you everything. No shame

In my secrets, shoddy as laundry.

I have praised your God

For the blessing of the body, snuck

From pleasure to pleasure, lying for it, 

Holding it like a coin or a key in my fist.

I know now you’ve known all along.

I won’t change. I want to give

Everything away. To wander forever.

Here is a pot of tea. Let’s share it

Slowly, like sisters.

by Tracy K. Smith

courtesy of The Poetry Foundation