Audio By Carbonatix
In this week’s cover story, “Slam, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am,” we profiled Suzi Q. Smith, one of Denver’s strongest voices and the number three female slam artist in the world. Smith spends 30 percent of her year traveling to teach and promote poetry outside of Colorado, but she spends 100 percent of her time brainstorming, collecting and writing new poems. Throughout the story, Westword introduced you to one of her most recent pieces, “When I Am Quiet,” but Smith’s back catalog numbers in the hundreds.
Click through to read “When I Am Quiet” and six of Smith’s other poems, and stay tuned for videos of her performances. It is one thing to read her poetry; it is quite another thing to see it.
When I Am Quiet
When I laugh, I mean it.
Loud and from my belly.
Throw my head back, shake my hair
and even show the generous gap
between my two front teeth.
It is when I am quiet that it is time to pay attention.
When I am quiet something big is about to happen.
When I am quiet I am concentrating.
When I am quiet I am going to climax.
When I am quiet I love you too powerful to speak.
When I am quiet I am going to take off your pants and change your life.
When I am quiet I am remembering what I have hidden at the tops of the closets
and deciding how best to pack them.
When I am quiet I am trying not to cry.
When I am quiet I am going to leave.
When I am quiet I am holding my tongue
curling my fist ’round it
tracing my fingers along the tip
wanting to throw it
wanting to hide it
wanting to swallow it.
I have words. Many, many words.
I have tongue and teeth and lips.
I keep a hurricane in my throat.
When I am quiet,
when the eerie silence fills the room
when the air is a wool coat, wet and heavy
when your body is an electrical fire
when your body is geometry dismembered
when everything about me is piercing and present
when everything I feel is too big to fit into my mouth,
when I am quiet
something big is about to happen.
When My Belly Growls
“And the dogs shall eat Jezebel, and there shall be none to bury her . . . And when Jezebel heard of it she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window.”
King James Bible Kings II, 9:10, 30
I have never answered to the name Jezebel.
Wept at the pictures in our children’s bible
when she was cast down. She lay crumpled,
the unfinished poem we were afraid to write
tossed to the dogs
the too-big piece of meat.
It taught me to be quiet,
it taught me to behave
it told me “never take what’s not yours,
girl – and by the way, nothing
is yours, girl.”
I always thought she must have been beautiful.
I always thought she must have been smart.
I wonder if she was wild, if she was part wolf like me,
I wonder if she bit the dogs back,
if she yelped when she hit the ground.
I didn’t want to be like her.
Practiced and mastered
the biting of my tongue, did not know then
how steel sharpens steel, my shark mouth razor,
piercing and pointed now.
I wonder if they will throw me to the dogs.
I wonder if I am wild enough to be their alpha.
I wonder if they will be starved enough to eat me anyway.
I wonder if I will howl,
if the moon will answer
hurling a tremendous tide.
I wonder if I will explode
into a pack of hungry dogs
when my flesh hits the pavement,
wonder if we will eat
right through the gates.
I have never answered to the name Jezebel.
Have been groomed for boxes, placed upon pedestals,
called righteous, called virtue,
called conscious, called pure,
my clumsy feet dangle heavy over edges.
I have had thrones torn from beneath me
disintegrate as any bit of glamour
taken as every other thing not mine
called dirty, called scapegoat,
called guilty, called whore
I have never answered.
I have never trusted
a table already set
have always sympathized with
wild-eyed hungry dogs
because they know how to hunt
and I, wild-eyed, gnash my terrible teeth
when I see pointing fingers
clawing hands prepared to lift me
to the teeter-totter throne
where worship is a stone’s throw from murder
I hear the howling outside the walls.
I Do Not Know How to Love You in English
I cannot tell by its rhythm where this heart was born,
it is only music pulsing through palms.
We know this when we hold hands,
let whispers tickle ears
whatever language they assume.
I do not know how to cry in English
no sé cómo llorar en Español,
tears are born world citizens
they do not need to speak to find each other,
to rush into rivers that cannot be dammed.
I will not ask the wind where it is from.
It would only answer
with its coming and going,
does not recognize these fences or lines,
does not even see them.
I will not ask the Monarchs for a passport,
will not pinch them from the air
and pin them for their passage,
will not shoot them
as they fly away.
I will not shush the roaring seas
beating upon the border from another nation’s shore
will not pretend its origin is worth less or more,
we are each of us worth our weight in water
or en papeles.
I will not ask each grain of sand
from whence it came,
will not interrogate the sediments
and segregate them by shade,
I will not cast a net around the beaches.
I do not know how to love you in English
No sé cómo te amo en Español;
only know that all that life begins with love
that cannot be walled or conquered.
I will not ask love where it comes from,
only know that it resides in me,
in the descansos dotting the desert.
I do not know what language bullets speak
have only ever heard them whisper past my head
in words I do not wish to remember or repeat,
would rather press palm to palm and whisper poems
“Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free . . .”
Would rather smile, warm as stew-filled belly
and break bread.
I will not ask the flames I cook with for identification
when they burn more orange
than red, white, or blue
as I do not know how to eat in English
No sé cómo comer en Español;
I do not know how to breathe in English
No sé cómo respirar en Español;
I do not know how to bleed in English
No sé cómo sangrar en Español;
but I think it is the same
Creo que es lo mismo
Con mis palabras
y con mi lengua rota
yo trato hablar.
You Ruin Everything
I love you.
This is neither fair nor reasonable.
I hope I hurt you.
I hope I ruined your life.
I hope you vowed to treat the next one better than you treated me.
I hate how well you treat her.
I still love you.
It is a fierce injustice.
I hope the hole I left in your life will always whistle.
I hope I am the one that got away.
I burned every picture of you.
I deleted your name from my phone.
You ruin everything.
There are too many jokes that only you get.
They are not funny anymore.
I still e-mail them to you sometimes.
You are a diamond ring on someone else’s finger.
You are the meal at the five-star restaurant that made me vomit.
You are my dream home and the termites in its bones.
You are a shipwrecked yacht.
You are a dream, a nightmare coming true.
You are a snowman on the first warm day.
You are a sunset on a moonless night.
You are the last cigarette.
You are a sweaty 2:00 a.m. pulling me away from what would have been a good fight.
You are two lovers that do not make love.
You are new sandals in a snowstorm.
You are a kiss on the cheek and the smell of another woman.
You are Central Park
and the autumn leaves
and the giant moon
and the rats in the bushes.
You are a bad poem.
You are the midnight kiss and the morning remorse.
You are the birthday phone call.
You are a wedding gown after the divorce.
You are a photograph of a dead friend that I still want to remember as living.
You are a great poem.
You are the best poem.
You are the poem that breaks my heart.
You broke my heart.
Several cardiologists confirmed this.
The echocardiogram showed there was a piece of it missing.
The blood kept flowing backward and maybe that’s why it’s so hard to let go.
It is a fierce injustice.
I left your book in your mailbox.
I am not sure the world is big enough.
Even the moon looks like you sometimes.
This is neither fair nor reasonable.
You cannot have me now.
I do not want you.
I do not want to want you.
You are a parking lot conversation after everything has closed and we cannot stay and we cannot go.
I do not want to write for you.
You do not love me.
I used to tell people it was complicated.
I sometimes still dream in your voice.
I hope you burned everything that reminds you of me.
I hope I ruined your favorite song.
I hope your smile will always bear my signature.
I hope you will always miss me.
The hole in my life whistles.
Jump Back, Honey, Jump Back
“Don’t forget who you are,”
She said.
“Don’t forget when you’re out there
with your friends
that before you were born
there was a place for you here, in my house
where we sing like Angels
dance like drops of water in a hot iron skillet
and glow like distant stars.”
We stay up late with the hot comb and grease
We wake up early for braids and beads
We walk to church five times a week
“There is still a place for you here, in my house,”
She says,
“where we shower love and sprinkle correction
smile into each other like mirrors
and remind ourselves of Home.”
Nana will let you eat steak at midnight
Nana will cry sometimes for no reason
Nana will open her doors for you
“There will always be a place for you here, in my house,”
She says,
“when it turns cold outside and you’ve gone too far
when the street lights come on and you see
the game is over.”
Leading me out of the lion’s mouth
though my soul looks back and wonders how
I think I understand what she’s been talking about
“Don’t forget who you are,”
She said.
“Always remember where you come from.”
The Rendering
I remember the summer we smoked dried bamboo;
found it growing or dying in the alley,
we spent afternoons hiding
in the garage with the caved-in roof
burning Barbie dolls and GI Joes,
old radios we found in garbage cans.
That summer, before we turned all gray and steely
we were sparks and giggles and gone,
matches pinched between fingers.
Pare
When I miss you I want to
etch your name into my thigh
so I can trace the scar
slow
with the tip of my finger
(you are not the first man i have missed).
I do not whittle your face, only trace
the phantom scar, palpable as your breath
warming my skin for your lips, I am
warming my skin when I miss you
(still something about my thighs should feel familiar).
The curve of the letters bears the hooks of your fingers,
I walk the way you sign your name.
I watch,
I practice.
(I am a schoolgirl
with a crush
and a straight razor
and a box cutter
and a pen knife
and a crush
a crushing
maiming
disfiguring
missing
you).
I scratch your name a secret and smile
my most wicked smile,
canary in my mouth and lump in my throat,
I press teeth and lips into the consonants of your name
tongue the vowels slow
until my mouth reveals your trace
(a callus
a knuckle
a stiff beard
a broad hand
a thick stroke
a stiff drink
a thick drink).
I think I see you
in the thin skin
of my inner thigh
your name, blinking canary
neon needling, insistent as raised skin
(mouthful of missing you).
Press my hungry hands into my lap
and wait and whisper
and wait and whisper
and want.
More on Suzi Q. Smith: “Slam poet Suzi Q. Smith brought a national championship to Denver” and “Suzi Q. Smith: Watch our cover poet perform with Lady Wu-Tang, Denver’s raw and rowdy female tribute.”
