Through Unsettling Mist
Two burglaries late one night
in a so-called up-scale neighborhood,
where you might see one black guy
at his mailbox, tending his lawn,
or pulling out of the driveway.
That night, I peeped out a front window
after seeing police lights flashing.
A half hour later, more blue lights,
then more, then flashlights shining
inside the homes of two white neighbors
vacationing on Memorial Day.
Still wearing yard clothes,
I thought of opening my front door
and stepping out to the porch,
but a silent voice reminded me
that I was a black man.
So, I kept the door shut,
and gazed through unsettling mist,
thinking about the arrest
of Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
after he entered his own home,
and pondering the frightening question
of why any black man in America today
would hesitate to stand on his front porch,
not for fear of being a victim of a crime
but a suspect of committing one.
John Warner Smith was the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2019 to 2021 and is the only African American male to serve in the office in its eighty-four-year history. Smith has published five collections of poetry, most recently Our Shut Eyes, published by MadHat Press in 2021. His sixth collection, From the Flinty Rock: New & Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Legacy Book Press in 2027.
Smith’s novella, For All Those Men: When the KKK Threatened to Take Control of Louisiana, was published by UL Press in November 2022. Sisters of Gavinville, his first full-length novel, was published in December 2024 by Between the Lines Publishing. Smith’s memoir, I, Too, Am Tar Baby, was published by Legacy Book Press in April 2025. His second novella, Murders at Mer Rouge, was published in 2026 by Between the Lines Publishing.
A Cave Canem Fellow, Smith is a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets and is winner of the 2019 Linda Hodge Bromberg Literary Award. He earned his MFA at the University of New Orleans.
Smith is now retired from full-time work and is an Adjunct Instructor of English at Southern University in Baton Rouge.
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