THIRD OBJECT
Poem
Waiting for you to die so I can be myself
Danez Smith
Work (plain text):
Waiting for you to die so I can be myself
Danez Smith
Poem
a thousand years of daughters then me
what else could i have learned to be?
girl after girl after giving herself to herself
one long ring shout name, monarchy of copper
& coal shoulders. the body too is a garment.
i learn this best from the snake angulating
out of her pork rind dress. i crawl out of myself
into myself, take refuge where i flee.
once, I snatched my heart out like a track
& found not a heart, but two girls forever
playing slide on a porch in my chest.
who knows how they keep count
they could be a single girl doubled
& joined at the hands. i’m stalling.
i want to say something without saying it
but there’s no time. i’m waiting for a few folks
i love dearly to die so i can be myself.
please don’t make me say who.
bitch, the garments i’d buy if my baby
wasn’t alive. if they woke up at their wake
they might not recognize that woman
in the front making all that noise.
From: Don’t call us dead. Publisher: Graywolf Press, Minneapolis Smith, D. (2017). Waiting on you to die so I can be by myself. Graywolf Press.
Work:
Copyright / permissions:
Smith, D. (2017). Waiting on you to die so I can be myself. In Don’t call us dead. Graywolf Press.
Biography:
Danez Smith was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. They are the author of Homie (Graywolf Press, 2020); Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), which was short-listed for the National Book Award; and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.
The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, Smith is also the winner of a Pushcart Prize. They co-host the podcast VS alongside Franny Choi. Smith lives in Minneapolis.
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