A
Sum
of Women
am I going
to have to
live divided
I dread it
I am dreading it
dreading
this division
of my heart
all four chambers used to
fill with blood for her
used to beat for her
used to be for her
now, what is like a river,
branching, splitting in two
what am I to do, confess
or live duplicitous,
double-minded
don’t like it one bit
though this new affair,
commencing,
is legitimate
just flipped like a pancake
in a pan in fat on the fire
needing to be brown,
to be done on both sides
am I supposed to resist,
be blunt, not bunt
what is pitched to me
to right or left or
somewhere or somehow
make no effort
to play the ball, to hit it
is it justification sufficient
to say that she is divided too
married already, in love with me
I did not-
still do not want
to learn to live like this
in pieces - in parts
or even divided
wanted to be living
just for her, not for two
is the heart
an orange or tangerine
with so many plugs,
as easy to divide
wanted to give it
to my wife whole
to hold out until
she was able,
was available,
to give herself
to me wholly also
but could she ever
be that committed,
that devoted
in bed with two men
or with how many at present
are they- are we
as close at times
as she and this other woman
in my life were this morning
only able, with great effort,
with delicate precision,
to keep them apart
Obediah Michael Smith was born on New Providence, in the Bahamas, in 1954. He has so far published 20 books of poetry. At University of Miami and University of the West Indies, Cavehill, Barbados, he participated in writers workshops facilitated by Lorna Goodison, Earl Lovelace, Grace Nichols, Merle Collins, and Mervyn Morris. He attended Memphis State University, 1973 to 1976 and majored in Speech & Drama and Biology. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Dramatics and Speech, from Fisk University. He has lived and has studied French, in Paris, France. At Universidad de Costa Rica, in 2011, he studied Spanish. Smith was the Poetry Workshop facilitator for the Bahamas Writers Summers Institute, in 2009 and again in 2011. His poems in English are included in literary journals and anthologies throughout the Caribbean, in the USA, in England and in Kenya, and his poems, translated into Spanish, are included in anthologies in Colombia, in Mexico, in Peru, in Venezuela and in Spain. In 2011 and 2012, for five months, he lived in Mexico City. He attended Kistrech Poetry Festival in Kisii, Kenya, in 2014 and in 2015. He spent from 2014 to 2018 in 11 countries in Africa. July 11 – 17 2018, he attended Romanian international poetry festival, Curtea de Argeş Poetry Nights. His poems are now included in that festival’s anthology translated into Romanian.