Imitation #5 (1990s): Patricia Smith "Skin Head"

It’s easy now to move my big body into shadows,
to move from a place where there was nothing
into the stark circle of a streetlight,
the pipe raised up high over my head.
It’s a kick to watch their eyes get big,
round and gleaming like cartoon jungle boys,
right in that second when they know
the pipe’s gonna come down, and I got this thing
I like to say, listen to this, I like to say
“Hey, nigger, Abe Lincoln’s been dead a long time.”

Patricia Smith’s poem “Skinhead” is by far my favorite poem of all time. I remember reading it my freshman year of college. My teacher had withheld the race of the author from us. I remember thinking how offal of a poem it was, so full of hate. Then when my teacher told us that this racist, angry, pro-White poem was written by a Black woman, it literally tore down walls in my creative process. This poem has allowed me to write in a new voice, a new way I would have never thought of, if it was not for Patricia Smith.

This poem is a slam poem. It does not rhyme, but it has a rhythm. The poem written as a narrative story that flows out of the reader’s mouth. It evokes the emotion of pure hatred towards any race that is not White.  This point cannot be highlighted enough that the author is a Black female. She had to put herself into the shoes of a skinhead, and for this poem she had to think like one. It is a testament to what an amazing creative writer Patricia Smith is.
              In this section of the poem we see the word “Nigger” appear. This is a rare case where I believe the word is in context and makes sense.  Too many times, in raps and poems, the N word comes up and it is used as in a light, fluffy context, almost used just for its shock value, and it ignores its historical background.  In the poem “Skinhead”, the N word is used the way it was used over history, not just for shock value. The shock value of this stanza comes from the words that surround the N word.  The words around the N word explain the graphic violence that this “skinhead” wants to commit onto the non-White world. This poem does not use traditional literary elements, but it forges its own way into becoming a wonderfully creative poem.