Katana Smith
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NOTHING MATTERS
Attending to my nothing
matters on Thursday when
work is over I go to the store
with the beautiful bay windows
and buy you something there
a pair of white leather gloves
that look like someone died
wearing them for your birthday
I buy a book of matches a photo
also of a woman wearing a pair
of white gloves standing still
in a studio somewhere before
a curtain of black velvet wearing
flowers in her hair and a white dress
with one gloved hand on a vase.
I wanted to buy you a picture
of a Black person I looked
through all the old photos
to no avail I am the only
Black person here. I go
to Trader Joes because
I need to eat and buy champagne
for you for your birthday
I am so lucky you are alive
I hope someone will buy
the photo of us that I keep
near my desk where we are
standing together in an apple
orchard and I need to buy apples
to eat on your birthday I’m fast
passing through the store in and out
the cashier says, “those are my favorite”
when I bring her the apples, “those are my
favorite” like they say here to anything at all.
FRENCH TOGETHER
I asked her do you think I’m a special person? We were sitting in her kitchen
having the affogatos I’d begged her to make in her tiny glasses. Do you think
I’m special? I leaned my head against her soft green wall the wall she painted
herself after begging her landlord just to paint the wall in her own apartment
and how she painted it with a large round roller and told me this is perfect
and she fed me there garbanzo beans and spinach in a large flat dish
when the sun went down and it was finally time for dinner. I told he
about a boy I knew once bought me a box of French pastries little
puffy things tucked in a plain white box wrapped in a green ribbon. We
had taken French together and I told him often that I dreamed of moving
to Paris which so far I had not done. I always thought I would somehow
be forced to do it somehow be pushed like out of a car maybe I would wake up
there one morning smoking a cigarette and with dark eyeliner under each eye
speaking to the waiter at a cafe in beautiful clear phlegmatic sentences. I realize
now he must have been in love with me. My friend that is. She looked at me
carefully with her large heavy eyes I wished she could hold me in place against
the soft green grass wall I should have told him that I loved him I would be
married every day he would bring me a plain white box with a green ribbon and inside
I would be a very special person every day but now she is just looking
at me and I am not a wife.
I asked her do you think I’m a special person? We were sitting in her kitchen
having the affogatos I’d begged her to make in her tiny glasses. Do you think
I’m special? I leaned my head against her soft green wall the wall she painted
herself after begging her landlord just to paint the wall in her own apartment
and how she painted it with a large round roller and told me this is perfect
and she fed me there garbanzo beans and spinach in a large flat dish
when the sun went down and it was finally time for dinner. I told he
about a boy I knew once bought me a box of French pastries little
puffy things tucked in a plain white box wrapped in a green ribbon. We
had taken French together and I told him often that I dreamed of moving
to Paris which so far I had not done. I always thought I would somehow
be forced to do it somehow be pushed like out of a car maybe I would wake up
there one morning smoking a cigarette and with dark eyeliner under each eye
speaking to the waiter at a cafe in beautiful clear phlegmatic sentences. I realize
now he must have been in love with me. My friend that is. She looked at me
carefully with her large heavy eyes I wished she could hold me in place against
the soft green grass wall I should have told him that I loved him I would be
married every day he would bring me a plain white box with a green ribbon and inside
I would be a very special person every day but now she is just looking
at me and I am not a wife.
Biographical Statement
Katana Smith is a poet from Aurora, Colorado and a graduate of Knox College, where she was a McNair Scholar. She is a graduate student in the MA+MFA program at Northwestern University.