Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

please, don’t call us dead, call us alive someplace better.

do you know what it’s like to live on land who loves you back?

replaced my friend with a hashtag.

don’t fret, we don’t die. they can’t kill the boy on your shirt again.

dead is the safest i’ve ever been. i’ve never been so alive.

dear badge number what did i do wrong? be born? be black? meet you?

i’ve left Earth, i am equal parts sick of your go back to Africa & i just don’t see race. neither did the poplar tree. we did not build your boats (though we did leave a trail of kin to guide us home). we did not build your prisons (though we did & we fill them too). we did not ask to be part of your America (though are we not America? her

why does it always have to be about race? because you made it that way! because you put an asterisk on my sister’s gorgeous face! call her pretty (for a black girl)!

this movie can’t be metaphor for black people & extinction.

& no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. besides, the only reason i want to make this is for the first scene anyway: little black boy

they turn our funerals into lessons, kid.

my honeyed kin those brown folks who make up the nation of my heart only allegiance i stand for realer than any god for them i bury whatever this country thought it was

Thank you mom, you are my number one hero & my proof of good.