DANEZ SMITH

bare


For you I’d send my body to battle
my body, let my blood sing of tearing

itself apart, the hollowing cords
of the white knights’ intravenous joist.

love, I want & barely know how 
to do much else. Don’t speak to me

about the raid you could loose on me
a clan of drunk rebel cells who thirst

to watch their home burn. love,
let me burn if it means you

& I have one night with no barrier
but skin. This is not about danger

but about faith, about being wasted
on your name. If love is a room

of broken glass, leave me to dance
until my feet are memory.

If love is a hole wide enough
to be a god’s mouth, let me plunge

into that holy dark & forget
the color of light. Love, stay

in me until our bodies forget
what divides us, until your blood

is my blood & your hands
are my hands, until our names

are the same song & our life’s work
be to lay & be, hum & die.
 
  
142 The Paris-American

Danez Smith is a Cave Canem Fellow, Pushcart Nominee, Survivor & Black Queer from St. Paul, MN. Danez was featured in The Academy of American Poets’ Emerging Poets Series by Patricia Smith & was a finalist for the 2013 RATTLE Poetry Prize. Danez is the author of hands on ya knees, a chapbook published by Penmanship Books. His full-length collection, [insert] Boy, will be published in 2014 by Yes Yes Books. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, Devil’s Lake, The Cortland Review, Anti-, & elsewhere. Danez started writing because of slams & necessity, & placed 6th in the world at the 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam & is the 2013 Rustbelt Midwest Regional Slam Champion. Danez twerks with the best, has no time for the rest. He writes & lives in Oakland, CA.

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  Next week's poet:

 Traci Brimhall