Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

i spent my life arguing how i mattered until it didn’t matter. who knew my haven would be my coffin? dead is the safest i’ve ever been. i’ve never been so alive.

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

if you trace the word diagnosis back enough you’ll find destiny trace it forward, find diaspora

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