Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

we earned this paradise by a death we didn’t deserve.

i’m sick of calling your recklessness the law. each night, i count my brothers. & in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted, i count the holes they leave.

your master magic trick, America. now he’s breathing, now he don’t. abra-cadaver.

how much time do you want for your progress? i’ve left Earth to find a place where my kin can be safe, where black people ain’t but people the same color as the good, wet earth, until that means something, until then i bid you well, i bid you war, i bid you our lives to gamble with no more.

anything is possible in a place where you can burn a body with less outrage than a flag