poetry
autumn/winter 2018
This Year Was the First Year I Could Not Remember Your Voice
by Clint Smith
I tried to imagine the phrases only you would say
but could only hear them falling
from someone else’s lips
I tried to imagine the stories you would tell me
but your laugh shattered
under the weight of this grief
I remember the words you would say
but I don’t remember the voice
that said them
I remember you would call me sugar
but I can’t remember exactly how
the r melted when it met the air
I remember how you’d tell me baby the lord is always watchin
but I am forgetting how your accent cocooned
the warning around my ears
It’s strange how I cannot remember your voice
but if I heard it I would immediately know
it was you
​
Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University who has received fellowships from the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, was published in 2016. It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.