Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

do you know what it’s like to live on land who loves you back? no need for geography now, we safe everywhere. point to whatever you please & call it church, home, or sweet love. paradise is a world where everything is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.

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

they grow wings, stoned wings, crumble & fall right out my body, my little darlings. i walk & leave a trail of my little never- no-mores.

some of us are killed in pieces, some of us all at once // 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 got this problem: i was born black & faggoty they sent a boy when the bullet missed.

we let the night blur into cum wonder & blood hallelujah