Body Magick: Poem

 

The following is a bit of a re-post, but I was thinking about it today and am getting ready to write. The first three books of my YA fantasy series Body Magick are all in full drafts, and I am shopping for agents. After a self-publishing run for friends and family, I have decided to give the series a shot as a traditional publication. Following is the poem I wrote as an undergraduate that served as the basis for the series' premise. Anee-Marie Thomas and I then talked out the plot of the first book on a road trip from Fayetteville to Dallas to visit friends. The plot changed a lot while I was actually writing the first book, but the premise remained the same. The idea may have been based on Farazara, Spain (image above LINK), which is really cool, but I only saw the village after I wrote the poem, so the origin is still a bit of a mystery. The poem was published in several magazines. Here it is!

The Hand

By

C. Jason Smith

The old man we called The Hand

Wrote on Everything in our town:

Top to bottom and inside and out,

He covered our walls with words.

He wrote with paints and pencils and pens,

Scribbled words with knives and sharp rocks and bone.

With his fingers dabbed daubed poetry 

using mud and blood and juice and pie.

The Hand wrote poetry and prose on walls;

Shopping lists and bucket lists on doors;

History and predictions and fictions on chimneys;

Sonnets on monuments and drama on outhouse walls—

Inside and out.

Thatch was rewoven in the dead of night

So words leaked wetly down onto bedroom floors. 

He liked to paint curse words

On passing migrating birds.

He wrote "Suddenly, there's bears!"

Down the Midwife's stairs. 

In time he wrote on our bodies as well:

He tattooed us from head to toe to tail.

Hide and seek is not a game our children play:

It is our daily life as graffitis of bodies 

wander our graffiti streets.

The old man we called The Hand

Wrote his way into our lives 

For uncounted years until he died.

We found his lettered body by smell

Leaning cold against the lettered well.

His lettered bones lie there still.

(1994)

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