Looking Under the Rock

Skinhead ~Patricia Smith

They call me skinhead, and I got my own beauty.
It is knife-scrawled across my back in sore, jagged letters,
it’s in the way my eyes snap away from the obvious.
I sit in my dim matchbox,
on the edge of a bed tousled with my ragged smell,
slide razors across my hair,
count how many ways
I can bring blood closer to the surface of my skin.
These are the duties of the righteous,
the ways of the anointed.

The face that moves in my mirror is huge and pockmarked,
scraped pink and brilliant, apple-cheeked,
I am filled with my own spit.
Two years ago, a machine that slices leather
sucked in my hand and held it,
whacking off three fingers at the root.
I didn’t feel nothing till I looked down
and saw one of them on the floor
next to my boot heel,
and I ain’t worked since then.

I sit here and watch niggers take over my TV set,
walking like kings up and down the sidewalks in my head,
walking like their fat black mamas named them Freedom.
My shoulders tell me that ain’t right.
So I move out into the sun
where my beauty makes them lower their heads,
or into the night
with a lead pipe up my sleeve,
a razor tucked in my boot.
I was born to make things right.

It’s easy now to move my big body into shadows,
to move from a place where there was nothing
into the stark circle of a streetlight,
the pipe raised up high over my head.
It’s a kick to watch their eyes get big,
round and gleaming like cartoon jungle boys,
right in that second when they know
the pipe’s gonna come down, and I got this thing
I like to say, listen to this, I like to say
“Hey, nigger, Abe Lincoln’s been dead a long time.”

I get hard listening to their skin burst.
I was born to make things right.

Then this newspaper guy comes around,
seems I was a little sloppy kicking some fag’s ass
and he opened his hole and screamed about it.
This reporter finds me curled up in my bed,
those TV flashes licking my face clean.
Same ol’ shit.
Ain’t got no job, the coloreds and spics got ’em all.
Why ain’t I working? Look at my hand, asshole.
No, I ain’t part of no organized group,
I’m just a white boy who loves his race,
fighting for a pure country.
Sometimes it’s just me. Sometimes three. Sometimes 30.
AIDS will take care of the faggots,
then it’s gon’ be white on black in the streets.
Then there’ll be three million.
I tell him that.

So he writes it up
and I come off looking like some kind of freak,
like I’m Hitler himself. I ain’t that lucky,
but I got my own beauty.
It is in my steel-toed boots,
in the hard corners of my shaved head.

I look in the mirror and hold up my mangled hand,
only the baby finger left, sticking straight up,
I know it’s the wrong goddamned finger,
but fuck you all anyway.
I’m riding the top rung of the perfect race,
my face scraped pink and brilliant.
I’m your baby, America, your boy,
drunk on my own spit, I am goddamned fuckin’ beautiful.

And I was born

and raised

right here.


...This probably counts among the most powerful of poems, and powerful of poets, I have ever been introduced to. Patricia Smith is a four-time winner of the National Grand Slam for performance poetry, and she exemplifies everything that can make performance poetry spectacular--much of slam poetry can be categorized as extended whining or lamenting, and often "tells" instead of "shows," but Smith never falls into that trap. In fact, very few of her poems focus on herself--she likes to put herself in other's shoes. (Par example: Medusa http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=14307&poem=182254). (For a short dialogue on showing v. telling: http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9912). Smith shows the anger of this man through his actions and dialogue--she doesn't ever state to the reader "This man is angry! He's really mad!" That's the power of good poetry--the message comes through implicitly.

Just imagine the above poem being read by a firey black woman, spitting each word into the mic with the same level of hate she illustrates in the skinhead she has created. I've never seen her perform this, but apparently it brings the house down. This does not surprise me in the least--it is explicitly an American poem, with American dialogue, character, theme, and issues, written to the hilt and filled with one of our more ugly cultural truths. Many of her poems are this way; indeed, if I were asked to point out an American-themed poet worth reading, she'd probably be it.

Your assignment: This one is tricky. Many, many poets try to write about the "underbelly" topics--suicide, cutting, violent death, abuse, rape--and often only succeed as a catharsis for the author, and not as a poem for general consumption. But, when an "ugly" topic finds an able writer, sometimes something tremendous emerges, such as Smith's poem. So--try writing about something painful or controversial-- many poets gravitate towards these topics naturally--but keep in mind what makes Smith's poem "work." Her poem never reads as a journal entry, or as a whine. She finds a way to channel her energy towards this topic in an unbelievably powerful way--through the eyes of a tormentor. Try on different hats, and perspectives, and tones, and metaphors--and know that if you try and tell a painful story through a poem, true or not, you cannot just trust that the reader will "get" the pain--you have to suck them into it somehow.