Smote. James Kimbrell

      

      SMOTE

      © 2015 by James Kimbrell

      FIRST EDITION

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Kimbrell, James, 1967–

      [Poems. Selections]

      Smote : poems / James Kimbrell.—First edition.

      pages ; cm

      eISBN 978-1-941411-13-1

      I. Title.

      PS3561.I41677A6 2015

      811'.54—dc23

      2014047731

      Cover and interior by Kirkby Gann Tittle.

      Manufactured in Canada.

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      for Jami

      CONTENTS

        Title Page

        Copyright

        Dedication

        Acknowledgments

       1.

      1  Free Checking!

      2  So Many Stories

      3  How to Tie a Knot

      4  Pluto’s Gate: Mississippi

      5  Take Me As I Am

      6  Ode: Feeling Up My Friend’s Sister at the Moment Their Drunken Father Begins the Dog Slaughter

      7  The Starting Point

       2.

      1  Apology after Driving Down Hooker Street Thirty Years after We Moved

      2  It Was Like a Movie

      3  Smote

      4  Apocalyptic Lullaby

      5  The Full Ratio

      6  Roots

      7  My Father’s Friends Travel from the Afterlife to Attend His Memorial

      8  Elegy for My Mother’s Ex-Boyfriend

      9  Kingfish

       3.

      1  Love Letter to You, Dear Reader

      2  Elegy for the Epic

      3  O Anna Lynn, You Must Have Known

      4  Afterlife

      5  Chicken Brick’n

      6  There’s Nothing Wrong with You

      7  The Guitar Boat

      8  Not Soul

      9  Heuristic for the Nearsighted

        The Author

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I would like to thank the editors and staff of the following publications in which several of the poems in this collection first appeared.

      The Cincinnati Review: “How to Tie a Knot,” “Pluto’s Gate: Mississippi,”

      “There’s Nothing Wrong with You”

      Connotation Press: “Take Me As I Am”

      Narrative: “Ode: Feeling Up My Friend’s Sister at the Moment Their

      Drunken Father Begins the Dog Slaughter”

      The New Guard: “Love Letter to You, Dear Reader”

      New South: “O Anna Lynn, You Must Have Known,” “It Was Like a

      Movie,” “The Guitar Boat”

      The Normal School: “So Many Stories”

      Ploughshares: “Chicken Brick’n,” “Free Checking!” “Smote”

      Southern Poetry Review: “The Full Ratio,” “Not Soul”

      “How to Tie a Knot” also appeared in Best American Poetry 2012, edited by Mark Doty.

      “How to Tie a Knot” and “Smote” also appeared on Poetry Daily.

      My sincere gratitude to Florida State University for their support during the period in which these poems were written. Also, my thanks to John and Renée Grisham and the University of Mississippi for a fellowship that afforded me a nine-month residency in which much of this work was begun. Lastly, my eternal gratitude for the continued encouragement and editorial acumen of Adam Boles, Erin Belieu, Robert Olen Butler, John Deming, Kerry James Evans, Juan Carlos Galeano, Chris Hayes, Robert Herschbach, Judy Jordan, Jami Kimbrell, Chris Mink, C. Leigh McInnis, and Jane Springer.

      SMOTE

      “. . . then we shall know that it is not his

      hand that smote us: it was chance.”

      I Samuel 6:9

1

Free Checking!

      Desire for the good deal, the hot need

      to look slick, wordless advertisement

      for the invisible product, I release you

      like the dumpster behind the cafeteria

      releases these long, festering rivers of milk.

      Fear of death, fear of narrow spaces, love

      of the wine-red mole that punctuates

      the transaction-inspiring cleavage of Jill,

      my credit union teller, I release you like

      the scared shitless man releases the tiny

      parachute. The name “James Kimbrell”

      which