Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

i’ll plant a garden on top where your hurt stopped.

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

i spent my life arguing how i mattered until it didn’t matter.

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

is there a word for the feeling prey feel when the teeth finally sink after years of waiting?

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

think: once, a white girl was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan War. later, up the block, Troy got shot & that was Tuesday.

reader, what does it feel like to be safe? white?