Sahara Smith

Woden

The pagan god of poetry
and madness
saw his lover standing by the window.

He tried to tell her
that her body was a bank of snow
somewhere outside Milwaukee
where the tracks of some small animal were barely visible
by moonlight.

Her eyes were eucalyptus trees
that rattled
in the rain.

But he said nothing
so he wouldn't get it wrong.

Our words are paper cups
we dip into the ocean
of our longing.

To this day, I cannot comprehend
the proper way to tell you
that I miss you

but it's something like a pale hand
in a dark room
opening.

Stars and Sighing

Here it is: The secret of the soft skin,
the quiet flesh you sinned against
and wore so cleanly thin.

Here it is: the bird beneath the cracked moon's
ragged rising;
the roses in the limp room damply dying.

There are two motions:
stars and
sighing.

We are the bruised miracle,
needling the chapped and chatteled Word,
immaculately misconstrued and overtongued
and badly heard.

We rattle in the time that we will bendlessly become,
and shuffle on the loose feet of a borrowed battle drum.

I am my native land. I am the soil
and the scars;
The stains of coffee cups and circuits
of the stars.

and history...
and history...

And history, the spidered orbit
of a bone beneath an acre
of wet grass.

Sahara Smith is singer/songwrite/poet from Austin, Texas. In 2010, T-Bone Burnett recorded her debut album, Myth of the Heart, which National Public Radio called “a hybrid of folk, Americana, country, and bluegrass.” In November 2010, Smith appeared on The Dave Letterman Show. Smith is now working on her second album under the name Girl Pilot. contact