Danez Smith: Poem Where I Be a House, Hence, You Live in Me
hell with your keys! you press paw into my varnished bark
& all my doors surrender. pace in my rum-soaked carpet
tumble down my stairs made of gums & the space between
teeth, this is to say you’ve pounced my throat
cast as a spotted beast bulleting toward his feast
I play the gazelle with a mouth bursting with blades
& revenge, which is to say I am a house that swallows
anything that dares to blood & rise. child, don’t play
in me too long. I’ve never been a tidy chapel. spotlessness
is for another kind of salvation. I am all mud & mud, I am
sick of the word “all,” but baby, everything in me needs
to be wiped down, yet I refuse. leave your print
everywhere, when I’m ready to be clean
I’ll burn down.
Sunrise with Subtitles
I had a big breakfast
This morning he filled my mouth
I forgot to say grace
before I had a chance to pray. Lord, I know
I ate it right out the pan
you know the need to bow & gag
I burnt my tongue
expecting heaven on the other side of a man
I reached for water
waiting to give you whatever blessing he sees fit
I thanked God with each gulp
did you not make us to need that?
DANEZ SMITH is a proud Cave Canem Fellow, two-time Pushcart Nominee, Best New Poets nominee & avid twerker living in St. Paul, Minnesota. Danez hold a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he worked for six years as part of the First Wave Hip-Hop ensemble. He was featured in the the Academy of American Poets’s American Poet as an emerging talent introduced Patricia Smith. His recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gertrude, decomP, The Cortland Review, Anti-, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He is an assistant editor for Muzzle Magazine. He thinks you look good today, now werk!
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