Claudia and Love

Abstract

Claudia and Love Mark Smith-Soto (bio) Her Jamaican words, half English prayer half Spanish curse, chased the flies from the kitchen and the cat from the fish. The scar on her neck crawled around like a snake or a raised piece of lace. She was narrow and long as the cry of a hawk, and between her breasts hung the tooth of a man. Why did she wear it? Against the curse of love. Whose tooth was it? A liar and a thief’s. She loved a man, she said, because his eyes were strange one looking straight at the way life was, the other at a slant to stare the devil in the face. She loved him, she said, because his fingers were fat, softer than jesus on her aching back. Now he lived in her heart like the cold in a rock. He left me, child,but his smile stayed home. She grinned at the tooth between her finger and thumb. Mark Smith-Soto Mark Smith-Soto, who is of Costa Rican descent, is a professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, where he edits the International Poetry Review. He is author of Jose Asuncion Silva and El arte de Alfonsina Storni. He has published poetry in such journals as Quarterly West, Poetry East, and Carolina Quarterly. Copyright © 2000 Charles H. Rowell