Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

they buried you all business, no ceremony. cameras, t-shirts, essays, protests then you were just dead. some nights i want to dig you up, bury you right.

do you know what it’s like to live on land who loves you back? no need for geography now, we safe everywhere.

paradise is a world where everything is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.

what good is a name if no one answers back?

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.

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 joints brittle & dragging a ripped gown through Oakland?).

ask 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)! because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?! because there are no amber alerts for amber-skinned girls! because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled. because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached. because black boys can always be too loud to live.

hallelujah! today i rode past five police cars & i can tell you about it

i don’t doubt that anything is possible in a place where you can burn a body with less outrage than a flag

think: once, a white girl was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan War. later, up the block, Troy got shot & that was Tuesday. are we not worthy of a city of ash? of 1,000 ships launched because we are missed? i demand a war to bring the dead child back.

prediction: the cop will walk free prediction: the boy will still be dead

during the anthem i hum “Niggas in Paris”