Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

history is what it is. it knows what it did.

O, the imagination of a new reborn boy but most of us settle on alive.

they’ve made you a boy i don’t know replaced my friend with a hashtag. wish i could tell you his hands are draped from my neck, but his shield is shaped like a badge. i leave revenge hopelessly to God.

i shout down sirens. they bring no safety.

take your God back. though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent.

sorcery you claim not to practice, hand my cousin a pistol to do your work.

& this life, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin this, if only this one, is ours.

love let me burn if it means you & i have one night with no barrier but skin.

they want us quiet, redeemed, or dead already, kid.

February 23rd, 2016, the CDC released a study estimating 1 in 2 black men who have sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.

holy shit???

do i think someone created AIDS? maybe. i don’t doubt that anything is possible in a place where you can burn a body with less outrage than a flag

i am sick of writing this poem but bring the boy. his new name his same old body. ordinary, black dead thing. bring him & we will mourn until we forget what we are mourning. is that what being black is about? not the joy of it, but the feeling you get when you are looking at your child, turn your head then, poof, no more child. that feeling. that’s black.

i have no more room for grief. it’s everywhere now. listen to my laugh & if you pay attention you’ll hear a wake.

look at what i did: on the tv the man from tv is gonna be president he has no words & hair beyond simile you’re dead, america & where you died grew something worse— crop white as the smile of a man with his country on his side a gun on his other