after Langston Hughes
i. The Child
My mother(land) wants
to abort me
after I have
learned to walk.
Sing me a sad song,
I am destiny’s dead child.
Say my name
& they sharpen a blade.
Say it again & I am gone.
My mother(land) says
I am not her child.
She has turned
her umbilical cord
into the reddest noose,
chokes her blood
with her blood.
My mother(land)
despises my breath,
wants to fill me
with a lead love.
She says if I kiss
the boy, the eyes
like old water,
she will place me
in a crib
of stone.
My mother(land)
decided not to be
a mother.
She has given
me her blood
& wants it back.
ii. The Mother(land)
little sweet sweet child of mine
my body holds you & a virus,
the white (anti) bodies flood
my blood yelling Christ! Sin! Kill! Christ!
& my blood, your blood, listens & roams
searching my veins for secrets, for a love
that book, with its white-white pages & gold
letters, calls abomination calls for prison
calls for blood my child—there is so much
blood everywhere, I can’t stop bleeding
your name, but the old Gods won’t come.
They have convinced your brothers & sisters
that heaven is not my flesh, my skin bursting
with good fruit & gentle suns my sweet
sweet child these white (anti) bodies invade
my body, whisper Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. & my body
hungry for salvation, obeys.
DANEZ SMITH is the winner of the 2014 Reading Series Contest sponsored by The Paris-American and was featured in The Academy of American Poets’ Emerging Poets Series by Patricia Smith. His collection, [insert] Boy, will be published in fall 2014 by YesYes Books. hands on ya knees, a chapbook, was published in 2013 by Penmanship Books. Danez is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, VONA-Voices, and elsewhere. He is a 2014 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.
