by Danez Smith
who sang to him
while the world closed
into dust?
what cure marker did we just kill?
what legend did we deny
his legend? I have no more
room for grief
for it is everywhere now.
listen. listen to my laugh
& if you pay attention
you’ll hear his wake.
prediction: the cop will walk free
the boy will still be dead
every night I pray to my God
for ashes
I pray to my God for ashes
to begin again
my God, for ashes, to begin again
I’d give my tongue
to begin again I’d give my tongue
a cop’s tongue too
vi. not an elegy for Brandon Zachary
a boy I was a boy who took his own life
right out his own hands. I forgot
black boys leave that way too.
I have no words that bring him
back, I am not magic enough. I’ve tried, but I’m just
flesh, blood yet to spill. people at the funeral
wondered what made him do it. people said
he saw something. I think that’s it. he saw something
what? the world? a road?
a river saying his name?
trees? a pair of ivory hands?
his reflection?
his son’s?
vii. hand me down
all my uncles are veterans of the war
but most of them just call it blackness.
all their music sounds like gospel
from a gun’s mouth. I gather the blues
must be named after the last bit of flame
licking what used to be a pew
or a girl.
I wish our skin didn’t come
with causalities, I can’t imagine a sidewalk
without blood.
when the men went off to fight
each other, the women stood
in the kitchen making dinner
for white folks. no one said
the kitchen was theirs. no one said
their children didn’t thin
then disappear altogether.
not all the women worked
keeping someone else’s house in order.
my great grandmother owned her block
a shop where she sold fatback & taffy, ran numbers.
I imagine that little stretch of St. Louis
as a kingdom, a church, a safe house
made of ox tails & pork rinds
a place to be black & not dead.
eventually, all black people die.
I believe when a person dies
the black lives on.
viii. not an elegy for…
this one
nor this one
nor this one
nor this one
nor this one
nor this one
not this one
nor the next one
nor the one after that
not this one
or this one either
no more elegies
bring the fire
POLITICS OF ELEGY
another brown man is dead
& now he’s my ancestor.
I was older than him before
but now he’s endless. what
do your people do
with their ghosts? if I write
the name of this new not here
is that the line? what if I write it
with quill & wound? I’ve trapped
so many boys in poems.
My mouth is an unmarked grave
above which flowers bloom
to sing the dead
or it is just my mouth.
I write about black boys
dying & this woman said
she enjoys my work — what?
failed resurrection? burial?
unsolicited eulogy?
sometimes the boy dying
is me so maybe she means
I’m putting on a good show
so far.
I won’t pin that on her.
I’m the one troubling the water
& calling it mother tears. a flood
is not what it is, but when they —
the loud dead — come for me
I offer them my hands, my pitiful
tongue. that could be a lie. I could be
playing in the corner with my invisible
friends. I say their names & nothing
happens or: I say their names
& a fire starts everywhere or: I say
their names & their names sprout
wings. raise your hands if you think
I’m a messenger. now this time
if you think I’m a tomb raider.
look around. there are no wrong answers.
DEAR WHITE AMERICA
I’ve left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system that revolves too near a black hole. I have left a patch of dirt in my place & many of you won’t know the difference; we are indeed the same color, one of us would eventually become the other. I’ve left Earth in search of a new God. I do not trust the God you have given us. My grandmother’s hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the blood-fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. Take your God back. Though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent. I want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha, I want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah risen three days after their entombing, their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood, their flesh & blood re-gifted their children. I have left Earth, I am equal parts sick of your ‘go back to Africa’ & ‘I just don’t see color’. Neither did the poplar tree. We did not build your boats (though we did leave a trail of kin to guide us home). 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?). I can’t stand your ground. I am 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. I reach for black folks & touch only air. Your master magic trick, America. Now he’s breathing, now he don’t. Abra-cadaver. White bread voodoo. Sorcery you claim not to practice, but have no problem benefitting from. I tried, white people. I tried to love you, but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. You interrupted my black veiled mourning with some mess about an article you read on Buzzfeed. You took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & asked ‘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! Because you call her pretty (for a black girl)! Because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?! Because there is no Amber Alert for the Amber Skinned Girls! Because we didn’t invent the bullet! Because crack was not our recipe! Because Jordan boomed. Because Emmitt whistled. Because Huey P. spoke. Because Martin preached. Because black boys can always be too loud to live. Because it’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brother’s & my sister’s time, my niece’s & my nephew’s time… 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. I’ve left Earth & I am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you. I am 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 shot or shackle or silence or impoverish or choke or lock up or cover up or bury or ruin
This, if only this one, is ours.
NOTES FOR A FILM ON BLACK
JOY
D’Angelo’s “Untitled” is on BET, your forehead pressed against the screen trying to look down, praying there’s a few more inches of TV. you don’t know what drives to you press your skin to the screen filled with his skin but you let yourself be driven, be hungry, be whatever this is when no one is around. you don’t know what a faggot is but you know a faggot would probably be doing this. you don’t know what a faggot is but you know you might be one. You don’t know what you are but you know you shouldn’t be. but you know that when D’Angelo sings how he sings looking how he looks, inside you something breaks open & then that odd flood of yes, a storm you can’t call a storm but the wind sounds like your name.
your auntie & ‘nem done finished the wine & put on that Ohio Players or whatever album makes them feel blackest. they dancin’ nasty & you watching from the steps when you should be sleep. your uncle is usually a man of much shoulders & silence but tonight he is a brown slur in the light, his body liquid & drunk with good sound. you feel like you shouldn’t be looking at how shameless he moves his hips, how he holds your auntie like a cliff or something that just might save him. your mama is not your mama tonight — she is 19 again she unsure what burns in her middle. your not-mama is caught in a rapture so ungospel you wonder if this is what they mean by sin, & if it is, how, like really how, could this be the way to hell? you’ve never seen her this free, this on fire this - “BOY!” she screams at you but not so you’ll go back to bed. she calls you to her, you grab her hands, she shows you where you come from.
your grandma sent you out to the big freezer to get some pork chops & while she said they were on top, you can’t find them to save your behind. you see neck bones, pig feet, whole chickens, chicken wings, chicken thighs, chicken nuggets, chitterlings, pizzas, freeze pops, some meat you don’t know the name of, but not the chops. grandma is gonna have to find it herself. your grandma doesn’t have much but she has this. who cares about kingdom if the children don’t thin? this was her great northern prayer to make the girls round & winter tough, watch the boys grown broad & alive. glory be the woman with enough meat to let the world starve but not her family, glory the pork chops she sends you to get but you can’t find, glory the woman who knows where she placed what is dead & what feeds, who rules the skillet with both hands while both she & the dinner bleed.
last summer you weren’t bowlegged & your mama noticed you got thick once you shed winter’s wool & she damned the young new fat wrapped around her narrow boy & the secret was out: you had secrets & those secrets had hands & mouths & bulges pressed against your jeans in someone else’s mama’s basement & your jeans are too little & this city was too beige & small for your wild, stay oiled legs to walk & run your mouth to someone’s son talking grown & acting like y’all got no home training & oooo he spread you flat & open & arched, your back the black edge of everything, the sun dipping down, look how quick the stars came to spill their barely light everywhere & somewhere on the other side of the horizon inside you a sun falls right out the sky, burns & burns until it pulls back out & you get darker every week in August walking around so black & sassy & unkillable & filled with shine boys look at you & go blind - most with rage, some with hunger.
you went to the mall & got errrrythang airbrushed cause homecoming next week. you been practicing the heel-toe for a month now & you need the fit to be as on point. you buy a tall-tee cause you must. you cop some forces cause what else? you didn’t buy new jeans but you’ll ask your grandma to iron a hard crease how she used to do your church clothes & you expect to be some kind of holy. you bring the tee & the forces & the yet-pressed jeans to the airbrush booth, you want your name in red, your school year down the leg, the shoes with a design almost bloody. & all those little stars that they do for free. so many stars. you gonna be so fly. a sky decked out in ruby.
when white folks talk about being black they never talk about how your grandma’s brow softens when you raise the spoonful of hot peas to your mouth on New Year’s or how your mother called you into her room in the morning to rub lotion on your face when she’d pumped too much. they don’t talk about being called into the kitchen to do you dance or sing that little song you sing or just stand there so your mama could be proud in front of company. they won’t talk about the rage & terror in her voice when she catches you fighting in the park or with liquor on your breath or anywhere you ain’t supposed to be, but are, or the joy she feels when she looks at you, grateful she still has a boy to look at, that no one has tested her joy & succeeded.
DINOSAURS IN THE HOOD
Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T-Rex, because there has to be a T-Rex.
(It’s a dinosaur movie, duh)
Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
Fuck that, the kid has a plastic brontosaurus or triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene
where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit
about Asian People or overused Latino stereotypes.
This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks –
children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exile saving their town
from real ass Dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy, yet progressive
Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny, yet strong, commanding
Black Girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith
& Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out
raptors with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want
those little spitty screamy dinosaurs. I want Cecily Tyson to make
a speech, maybe 2. I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last
scene with a black fist afro pick through the last dinosaur’s long,
cold-blood neck. But this can’t be a black movie. This can’t be a
black movie. This movie can’t be dismissed because of its cast
or its audience. This movie can’t be metaphor for black people
& extinction. This movie can’t be about race. This movie can’t be
about black pain or cause black people pain. This movie
can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt.
This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this movie
who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this
movie. No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy.
& no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides,
the only reason I want to make this is for that first scene anyway:
little black boy on the bus with a toy dinosaur,
his eyes wide & endless
his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.
NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dinosaurs in the Hood & subsequently a large portion of the poems in this project owe their creation to & were inspired by Terrance Hayes’ “We Should Make a Documentary About Spades.”
Dear White America contains lines by Amiri Baraka and James Baldwin.
Many thanks to the editors and staff of the following publications in which early versions of these poems have appeared:
Poetry Magazine, At Length, Michigan Quarterly, HEart Journal, Storyscape Journal, Blue Shift, & Spilt This Rock’s Poem of the Week
Thank you Michael Mlekoday & the whole Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Team for making this happen. Huge thanks Marcus Wicker for c
hoosing this chapbook for publication and your wisdom which helped craft it.
Thank you everyone in the Dark Noise Collective for your constant and monumental love. Thank you Sad Boy Supper Club for being the weird boy coven I’ve always wanted. I love you all.
Thank you to Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, and the Millay Colony of the Arts for all the support in making this.
Thank you to black people everywhere for being so beautiful and resilient and wondrous.
Thank you to my grandmamma n’ nem. I love you all too much for words.
And thank you, reader.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danez Smith is the author of [insert] boy (2014, YesYes Books), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His 2nd full-length collection will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. His work has published & featured widely including in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Buzzfeed, Blavity, & Ploughshares. He is a 2014 Ruth Lilly - Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, a Cave Canem and VONA alum, and recipient of a McKnight Foundation Fellowship. He is a 2-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, placing 2nd in 2014. He is the micro-editor for The Offing & is a founding member of 2 collectives, Dark Noise and Sad Boy Supper Club. He is an MFA candidate at The University of Michigan. He is from St. Paul, MN.
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