Danez Smith

Danez Smith was born St. Paul, Minnesota. They are the author of Don't Call Us Dead (2017), a finalist for the National Book Award; [insert] Boy (2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; and the chapbook hands on ya knees (Penmanship Books, 2013). Smith is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, Voices of Our Nation (VONA), and elsewhere. They are a founding member of the multigenre, multicultural Dark Noise Collective. Their writing has appeared in many magazines and journals, such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Kinfolks. In poetry slam, Smith is a 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam finalist and the reigning two-time Rustbelt Individual Champion, and was on the 2014 championship team Sad Boy Supper Club. In 2014 they were the festival director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam, and were awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Smith earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they were a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar. They are a co-host of the Poetry Foundation's podcast, VS. Source

Excerpt from “summer, somewhere”

somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown

as rye play the dozens & ball, jump

in the air & stay there. boys become new

moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise

-blue water to fly, at least tide, at least

spit back a father or two. I won’t get started.

history is what it is. it knows what it did.

bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy

color of a July well spent. but here, not earth

not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt

turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language

for officer or law, no color to call white.

if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call

us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray.

we go out for sweets & come back.

•

this is how we are born: come morning

after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig

a new boy from the ground, take

him out his treebox, shake worms

from his braids. sometimes they’ll sing

a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!)

sometimes it’s they eyes who lead

scanning for bonefleshed men in blue.

we say congrats, you’re a boy again!

we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance.

we send him off to wander for a day

or ever, let him pick his new name.

that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing.

that man Sean named himself I do, I do.

O, the imagination of a new reborn boy

but most of us settle on alive.

Published:

2016

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Childhood & Coming of Age

Identity

Intersectionality & Culture

Racial Injustice