Its appetite for blood is sharp steel

leaning, weeping into the tomato’s meat,

sugar beets, steaming rhubarb pie and hunts

that juice etching your hands, pulsing

your neck and shifting your hips. You

slice, you bleed, you leak into pools bubbling

the countertop, over the scuffed linoleum

to the stainless steel sink and anoint the potato

peelings, onion skins and apple rinds.

Make your salad before rot sets in

and that side of you that turns my head

after we’ve parted on the street

to watch your steps escapes. You come to me

squeezing your bleeding as if it were a gift,

as if the more you bled the better you’d feel

offering your invitation to join the thin red

sliver seething and throbbing your hands

into mine. Beautiful bleeder, my hands

never held holy powers until they entangled yours.

A blade, I understand its language. Give me

the knife and press its edge here. Pull.

he and his crew are
loading ammunition
onto the Tampa

a 240-foot cutter,
when the sheave
breaks, and crates

of 3”/.50 caliber
bullets begin
to plummet toward

the men below.
All let go of the rope
except my father.

He holds to that line
as he’d later hold
to all of us –

my mother, my brothers,
my sister and me,
until the skin peels

from his palms,
and the rope
slices through to bone.

About The Last Supper
this much is known:
left unfinished by da Vinci,

it moldered
on the refectory wall,
twenty damp Milanese

winters, until Vasari
dismissed it
as merely a mass of blots.

Over time, monks
hammered a doorway
through Mark’s legs,

and one long evening
Napoleon’s soldiers,
garrisoned there for winter

blew away the head and
hands of Christ.
In WWII, when a bomb

leveled Santa Maria
delle Grazie,
the mural survived.

Of da Vinci’s original
work, however, only a few
brushstrokes remained.

His Saint Jerome was luckier.
In a pawn-shop by
the Vatican, Napoleon’s uncle

discovered its torso, and later
amid a wilderness
of broken glass, the head, as if

proof of miraculous returns,
and it’s true, what is lost to us
is sometimes found – though

changed somehow, or incomplete;
a jug of wine, a loaf of bread
stolen away from your heart’s table,

head lolling
like a sad cloud
over your body’s remembered heat.

But isn’t a thing’s beauty
in how it resists
all that would destroy it?

How, sometimes, faith rises whole
and swift-limbed
from such burnt offerings –

the gift horse, whose mouth
we climb inside
to carry ourselves home.

shrunken-head paperweights, bisected
heads preserved, suspended in
transparent resin, to better view the Jew brain.

Local townspeople trucked in. Now you can’t
tell the world you didn’t know. One woman
presses a handkerchief to mouth and nose,

a man dizzily cradles his chin. Look closely.
You can see history rooting in their bodies,
the horror of it pulling out their tongues.

hired to make sulfur matches
would dip the match-ends

into a chemical vat, then
lick the tips to make them stiff.

The vats were filled with zinc sulfide,
a radioactive substance

about which no one warned them,
so when their teeth fell out,

and their jaws and bodies
rotted like bad fruit, it was too late.

It was not the first time
such things happened.

Bent at their work stations,
women in the 18th century

cured ladies’ hats with mercury.
Their legacy – blushing, aching limbs,

a plague of rashes, parchment-thin
pages of sloughed skin, curled

and cracked, minds deranged.
They could not know they shared a fate

with the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who
seeking eternal life, swallowed pills

laced with mercury. He built the Great Wall
and unified China, then outlawed and burned

treatises on history, art, politics,
and all religions not sanctioned by the state.

Scholars who dared possess such things,
he buried alive. His body lies

in a vast mausoleum, guarded
by a terracotta army.

Of the factory girls, mouths opening
soundlessly below earth,

their bodies burning like forbidden books,
we know almost nothing.

replete, imperturbable.
Shadows are sarsens here –

autumn spilled on the ground,
winter gathering in the sky.

Come to bed tonight,
curl your body into mine.

From next year’s furrows
the braided gold will rise.

Time enough, my love
to exhale the breath

we did not know we were
holding for this world.

hand outstretched, the angel Gabriel
drops his bombshell: see this dove, yea
he is really the son of God and will soon

be checking into your holiest of virgin
wombs. His coffee-and-cream wings coy,
furled, I imagine him requesting her

forbearance at a time like this, then
apologizing for the pun (even angels
sometimes cannot resist a good pun).

Meanwhile, Mary gazes non-plussed
at what should be a delicate
white bird, a pure symbol, except

in its impervious, amniotic
golden bubble, levering slowly down
those piercing cables of light

like a tram full of divinity,
Prevoost’s dove more resembles
a chicken, stubby-winged and beaked,

awkward in its sac, as if it couldn’t fly
without God’s express assistance.
What can I say? You wanted 


doves in their alluvial grace,
a fanfare of trumpets? Let’s face it.
Sometimes it’s the chicken

who brings us the news – every flawed,
graceless thing we must
take into ourselves and transform.

Because of your generosity we can continue to provide audio of exciting young poets reading
their work, and continue to improve the way we reach into the community and
classroom to promote the enjoyment and education of poetry.

December 28, 2012

Dear Friend of Fishouse,

When Matt asked me to help with Fishouse’s end-of-year campaign, my answer was an unequivocal yes. I have been a fan of Fishouse for a very long time, and have grown as a reader, writer and educator because of it.

I use Fishouse when I teach; I tell people about it whenever I’m asked about what’s new in the world of poetry. I check in frequently to get caught up on new recordings, and I am being edified by the translation section that Curtis Bauer has been building, which so far features poems from Chinese, Spanish, and Danish poets.

Matt also recently shared some fantastic news: he has found a developer for a new website for Fishouse – its first redesign since its launch 7 years ago. The original site was launched before Facebook (remember the days when we had to content ourselves with simply wondering where all our grade-school friends ended up?); as I’m sure you can imagine, there are a great many technological improvements to be made, as well as a new graphic interface, and extensive search options. Perhaps even more exciting than all of this is the fact that Fishouse is going mobile! The ability to properly display and access poems and audio on phones and tablets will expand Fishouse’s reach and impact for more and more users.

This is where all of us come in. The redesign will cost $10,000, and we have the first $5,000 saved/provided, but we need to raise $5,000 by January 15 to complete the project.

I know that many of us already support a number of worthy organizations and causes, but I’d like to encourage you to add Fishouse to your list, or to increase your current financial commitment to the site. Not only does each dollar that we contribute go toward building one of the most vast and engaging public-access audio archives of its kind, but our support will help bring Fishouse closer to a tangible goal: a stronger website to use and share with others, a better teaching tool, and an even greater sense of pride and joy.

Join me in helping Fishouse make this dream a reality. Any size gift helps, and I hope you’ll consider a contribution of $25 or more. For those able to make a gift, I’ve recorded a new poem, “After a Line by Goethe,” as a thank you.

Fishouse made such a difference to the life—and voice—of contemporary poetry. And with your help, it can begin to do even more.

You can make a secure online donation here through PayPal:

Or you can mail a check to:
From the Fishouse
87 Stage Road
Pittston, ME 04345

With every bright wish,

Tracy K. Smith