The Rose Has Teeth (By Terrance Hayes)

Written by celebrated poet and Pitt professor of English Terrance Hayes, this poem was read by him during Pitt’s Feb. 24, 2014, Black History Month event, A Celebration of the Arts. The lyrical reading was accompanied by the music of Geri Allen, internationally renowned pianist, composer, and director of Pitt’s Jazz Studies Program.

I was trying to play the twelve bar blues

with two bars. I was trying to fill the room

with a shocked and awkward color,

I was trying to limber your shuffle, the muscle

wired to muscle. I wanted to be a lucid hammer.

I was trying to play like the first mechanic

asked to repair the first automobile.

Once, Piano, every man-made song could fit

in your mouth. But I was trying to play Burial’s

“Ghost Hardware.” I was trying to play the sound

of applause by trying to play the sound of rain.

I was trying to mimic the stain on a bed,

the sound of a woman’s soft, contracting bellow,

the answer to who I am. Before I trust the god

who makes me rot, I trust you, Piano.

Something deathless fills your wood.

Because I wanted to be invisible, I was

trying to play like a woman blacker

than an unpaid light bill, like a white boy

lost in the snow. I wanted to be a ghost

because the skull is just a few holes

covered in meat. The skin has no teeth.

I was trying to play what I felt singing

in the mirror as a boy. I was trying to play

what I overheard: the old questions, the hunger,

the rattle of spines. The body that only loves

what it can touch always turns to dust.

What would a mother feel if her child sang

“Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child”

too beautifully? A hole has no teeth.

A bird has no teeth. But you got teeth, Piano.

You make me high. You make me dance.

You make me believe there is good in me.

My lady, she dreams I am better than I am.

I was trying to play like strange fruit hanging

in a tree. A tree has no teeth. A horn has no teeth.

Don’t chew, Piano. Don’t chew, sing to me

you fine-ass lounging harp. You fancy engine

doing other people’s work. I was trying to play

the sound of an empty house because

that’s how I get by when the darkness in my body

starts to bleed. I was trying to play “Autumn Leaves”

because that’s what my lady’s falling dress

sounds like to me. Before you, Piano, I was just a rap

of knuckles on a window sill. I am filled with the sound

of my lover’s breathing and only you can bring it out of me.