Poetry break: Destiny L. Smith

Editors note: This was a post on social media a couple weeks back that we asked the author Destiny L. Smith, a local artist, if we could share it with our readers. 
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1973 my mother and I lived in little Italy
a rundown two story, 
tucked between two larger buildings 
split into two apartments 
we lived downstairs 
200 block of west 18th 
at night my bathroom had 
water bugs the size of monsters
they would scatter when 
you turned on the light 
it’s gone now
that house
someone tore it down 
now a place where old men sit 
on folding chairs smoking cigars
talking about the good old days
in that kitchen mom was crying
praying to the silent god by the corner window 
Ian Kirk’s mother called from Scotland to say her son was married with two kids and to stay in America 
my first passport was never used 
Saint Patricks day at the corner bar 
offered a remedy 
mom and dad married not long after 
dads mom, my Polish grandmother looked my mom up and down when they first met, 
I’m sure she was tired 
already raised her many children on delicious food and lots of prayers
mom got the big family every orphan craves dad got a second wife and a fourth daughter 
small me felt loved
three new sisters, 
the eldest tender and kind
the middle indifferent 
and the youngest traumatized 
all of us abandoned in our own way 
trying to find our place in the world
Polish people use butter like 
a fairy godmother uses her wand
Everything gets covered with it
butter on bread before the lunch meat, 
butter on noodles before the sauce, 
butter on all the cooked veggies
and butter on warm cake
for a hungry child butter was a simple joy
dad likes his toast buttered corner to corner 
I’ve always had a memory like an elephant 
my mind is like a time traveling ghost
I have the ability to open any door in my past 
wandering all I want in each moment as if it was happening now
not long before my parents met
I was sent to bed without supper 
mom had a blue floral Avon lady’s suitcase 
with tiny little sample lipsticks and to my luck some leftover crackers to tide me over
why did parents put “bad” kids to bed without dinner?
I turn the page in my ghost travel memories and my dad is passed out in his vomit on the second floor of my aunts house 
before he found sobriety, 
it’s a testament to how far he’s come
we lived in my dad’s sister house 
at beginning of my parents life together 
a swimming pool in the backyard and skinny dipping with my sisters in the rain
I was so afraid of getting into trouble 
same house had a claw foot tub
mom bathed my great grandmother 
her breasts floated in the warm water 
like clouds 
great granny Sophie taught me that 
#1 was pee, #2 was poop and #3 was diarrhea 
what a thing to learn at three
her hands were knotted up with arthritis 
curled like a crows feet on a branch 
her accent thick as molasses 
she’d come over from the old country 
took a boat and left her whole world 
eventually married 
an Armenian tailor In Philadelphia 
not a very nice man as my uncle tells it
he died early with a bad heart 
granny moved to Erie
she left this world in 1976
scent is the safe deposit box of memories 
bacon grease in a tin can and I’m in my grandmas kitchen 
the one that adopted my mom from the orphanage 
a stern human but her pie crust made with lard was so tender and flaky 
and her garden as lush as Eden
I tell these little bits of my history because there is so much to say but mostly because I feel everything with the intensity of the sun memories burning my mind and heart
Others I here, don’t remember things 
or feel so deeply that they are paralyzed 
are they empty vessels that can float through life unbothered?
why am I the ghost traveler 
why are others midnight with no dreams?
my blood, my kin are plagued with generational trauma 
an oil slick of wounds we can not heal 
each one runs through my mind like a horror film with no end and I drown over and over 
still I search for a solution, resolution and peace 
the people are living in some fantasy world that everything is okay 
we could discuss this philosophically but we know how it ends. 
there’s an endless supply of memories but for today that is all.




Destiny L Smith 8/23