The intentions of thunder : new and selected poems / Patricia Smith.

Life according to Motown, 1991. What it's like to be a Black girl (for those of you who aren't)
Medusa
Your man
The awakening
Sweet daddy
Big towns, big talk, 1992. Annie Pearl Smith discovers moonlight
Doin' the Louvre
Biting back
The architect
Skinhead
In the ultimate blues bar
Olive Oyl talks to People magazine
Chinese cucumbers
Close to death, 1993. Edward or Edwin
Terrell's take on things
Daddy braids my hair 1962
The room with the star
Undertaker
A poem for the man who shot my father
The dark magicians
In his room. With him gone.
Spinning 'til you get dizzy
A found poem
Reconstruction
Teahouse of the almighty, 2006. Building Nicole's mama
Giving birth to soldiers
The world won't wait
Listening at the door
My million fathers, still here past
How to be a lecherous little old Black man and make lots of money
Map rappin'
Scribe
What you pray toward
Dream dead daddy walking
Teahouse of the almighty
Running for Aretha
When the burning begins
Blood dazzler, 2008. Prologue - and then she owns you
5 p.m., Tuesday, August 23, 2005
11 a.m., Wednesday, August 24, 2005
5 p.m., Thursday, August 25, 2005
7 p.m., Thursday, August 25, 2005
Man on the TV say
Won't be but a minute
8 a.m., Sunday, August 28, 2005
The dawn of Luther B's best day
10:30 a.m., Sunday, August 28, 2005
Luther B rides out the storm
What to tweak
The president flies over
Tankas
Ethel's sestina
34
Buried
Luther B ascends
Siblings
Uncollected, 1990-2010. First time trying to say where my son was
The blood sonnets
It creeps back in
The episode where daddy dies - but, again, doesn't
To the woman, not trying to fly, who fell with her legs closed, arms pressed against the front of her body, while primly clutching her purse
Man, roll the window down!
Post-racial
Second time trying to say where my son was
Shoulda been Jimi Savannah, 2012. How mamas begin sometimes
Still life with toothpick
Keep saying heaven and it will
Fixing on the next star
Annie Pearl, upward
Shoulda been Jimi Savannah
A colored girl will slice you if you talk wrong about Motown
Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered tavern,
An all-purpose product
Because
To keep from saying dead
13 ways of looking at 13
Hip-hop ghazal
Thief of tongues
Motown crown
Incendiary art, 2017. That chile Emmett in that casket
Incendiary art
Emmett Till : choose your own adventure
Incendiary art : Birmingham, 1963
Emmett Till : choose your own adventure
Hey, who you got in here?
Incendiary art : Los Angeles, 1992
Black, poured directly into the wound
Mammy Two-Shoes, rightful owner of Tom, addresses the lady of the house
Incendiary art : Ferguson, 2014
XXXL
Emmett Till : choose your own adventure
The five stages of drowning
When Black men drown their daughters
Blurred quotient and theory
Sagas of the accidental saint
The first 23 minutes of the first day without
And he stays dead
Emmett Till : choose your own adventure
Incendiary art : the body
Unshuttered, 2023. 263
265
267
269
271
273
275
277
279
Unshuttered
Uncollected, 2010-2024. Double shovel on a line from MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham jail"
How to find a missing Black woman
Letter from Walpole
Nap unleashed
Pandemics
Practice standing unleashed and clean
The price of the end of it
Salutations in search of
The storefronts wore their names
The stuff of astounding
To little Black girls, risking flower
What daughters come down to
70. 70
Scars poetica
acknowledging.