Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

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

dead is the safest i’ve ever been. i’ve never been so alive.

dear badge number what did i do wrong? be born? be black? meet you?

am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you. i’m giving the stars their right names. & this life, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin this, if only this one, is ours.

imagine a tulip, upon seeing a garden full of tulips, sheds its petals in disgust, prays some bee will bring its pollen to a rose bush. imagine shadows longing for a room with light in every direction. you look in the mirror & see a man you refuse to love. small child sleeping near Clorox, dreaming of soap suds & milk, if no one has told you, you are beautiful & lovable & black & enough & so—you pretty you—am i.

if love is a room of broken glass, leave me to dance until my feet are memory.

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

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

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