Smith, Patricia

United States, (b. 1955)

ALWAYS HUNGRY

  1. Obscene enticement, the entire head of a hog
  2. in the window of the meat market
  3. is fly-speckled testament to what man will gobble
  4. if it can be bought one quarter at a time.
  5. Mama and I will make sandwiches
  6. from this pig’s jellied noggin,
  7. slicing the cheese of it thin,
  8. drenching snowy bread with Tabasco.
  9.  
  10. It is this way with us,
  11. girls of the first wave.
  12. We crave chicken necks, salt pork,
  13. the pickled feet of pigs.
  14. We pluck hairs from the skin of our suppers,
  15. treasure sizzling drippings in sinkside jars,
  16. sop up what’s left with biscuits.
  17.  
  18. Outside of us, cities are torched.
  19. Policies decide who we are, where we will live.
  20. But our souls are hastily crafted
  21. of fat, salt and sugar,
  22. all that Dixie dirt binding us whole.

© Patricia Smith. Rattle #27, Summer 2007. https://www.rattle.com/.

About the Poet:

Patricia Smith-DeSilva, United States, (b. 1955) is a poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She is the author of eight books of poetry and her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American Poetry. She is also hailed as the first African-American woman to publish a weekly metro column for the Boston Globe.

Smith is a Guggenheim fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, a former fellow at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colonies, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. She teaches at the College of Staten Island and in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College, as well as an instructor at the annual VONA residency and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program. [DES-12/19]

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