Issue
#3

May
2009 

a poem by Willie Smith

IN WHOM I AM WELL

Slit my own throat.
Dance in the blood.
When I start to slip,
shoot myself in the foot.

Spin on the floor
forevermore
like a flywheel God greased.
Quake upright onto a rim.
Fall on a needle.
Skewer my heart
to burst. What
doesn't make me live
shoots the rapids.
The more I smell
the stronger I get.
Words dump barrows.
Breath tombs thought.
I sit--a hit nail
humming in the mahogany.
Leap for the blade,
reciting from Zanzibar
to Abel,
'til find myself
disabled
in bulbs flashed
across the floor,
weeping for the onion
in the sperm
of the nerve
to kill the source's curse.

Slit my own throat.
Dance in the blood.
When I start to slip, shoot, oh
please, off my foot.

© Willie Smith

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