We Just Waiting for J's Liquor to Open on Up, and: It's Pinned Above My Desk—That Picture, and: Just Another Day in Fourth Grade

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• We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up, and: It’s Pinned Above My Desk—That Picture, and: Just Another Day in Fourth Grade
• Patricia Smith (bio)

We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up

1.

I smell the cloying stink of a particular religion etchingits gospel on the scrubbed, unworried side of the rollingshutters. It’s the funk of the preach that draws me here,the side-eye that renders me bent double, twinging, mythick mouth willing to swap language for flame. I admitout loud to being Jesus’ damned near, the almostof the Holy Ghost, the mistake that won’t quit even ifit could see how. I’m out here in the wind with the restof the no-shame-in-our-game disciples, heads bowed,eyes leaking the last of last night. We are obedientin the way the just-waking boulevard says we must be—reverent, slow-stomping our dirt-tired hymns. Looks likewe’re waiting for another sloppy resurrection. But notme, Lawd, not this fool. I’m next in line for the cross.

2.

Checking my phone, and here come that text message overand over: Where you at? Last time I looked, I’m still grown,still walking any street that’ll hold on to me. I’m still grown,rising from my own damned bed just in time, scrubbingthe sweat from my ass, getting to where I need to be, right [End Page 248] on the clock. I’m where I’m gon’ be at, I say with my thumbs,then I shut the damn thing off ’cause I can’t stand the waythose green numbers keep yelling Not yet. I need these folksto roll that cranky old steel on up, let me run straight to mysip of beautiful, my sip of slow drag, my sip of the wayI need my man to rock me. Until then, I’ll disappear insidemy own thirsty shadow, trying not to lock pinkish eye withthe only other sister here. Why they keep locking up ourbeautiful, locking down the only way we know to sing?

3.

Nobody sings the blues anymore. Nobody’s got the gut,walks the gravel, nobody takes the time to really knowwhat’s under the under that’s under us. I’ve been there.What I saw peeled me bloodless, made me stumble, itcaused me to renounce my Christian name. I saw mymama, her legs blown up near to bursting, the boomin her veins bulging her eyes. Then I saw my daddy,who said again that, for the life of him, he didn’t knowwho the hell I was. Then that hardest picture hit me,my baby boy, way too little, blue, tangled up in his ownlifeline. I keep feeling his last breath like a rock thrownagainst my neck. And the women, the ones I’ve straightup lied to, the ones that crawled my skin. And the lasthell I see, every damned time, is me. Here. Waiting.

4.

I just like it. I like how my day winds loose once it’sin me, how I start lovin’ folks I should hate, how [End Page 249] the sun just keeps rising, over and over, and how myname sounds like butter on the air. Nothing elseremakes me this kinda way. I can’t sleep or wakeup without it, that burn torching my landscape clean,it’s the smasher of sorrows, a quarter for my jukebox,it’s what Jesus sends me when He can’t get hereon time. I just need it. I’m not like these other folks,all broke and shake. Don’t need to slap everythingblack, I’m not asking for the liquor to shut me down.I’m out here under this sun waiting for the sun to rise,I’m here to carve this life to my liking. Stay here andwatch me. The harder the drink, the wider I bloom.

5.

There is a mouth in my body, an open sore yawningand awake...