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if i went to jail i’d live rent free but there is no way to avoid making white people richer

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homie

Also by Danez Smith

[insert] boy

Don’t Call Us Dead

homie

/ poems /

DANEZ SMITH

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Copyright

Copyright © 2020 by Danez Smith

The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64445-010-9

Ebook ISBN 978-1-64445-109-0

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2020

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933271

Cover design: Carlos Esparza

note on the title

note on the title

this book was titled homie because i don’t want non-black people to say my nig out loud.

this book is really titled my nig.

my nig

/ poems /

DANEZ SMITH

GRAYWOLF PRESS

for the homies

who keep me

for the realest one

Phonetic One

Andrew Thomas

for you & your friends

Yes, each man is a tower of birds, I write my friends

into earth, into earth, into earth.

ILYA KAMINSKY

Lost some real niggas I knew from a long time ago

But heaven or hell I hopin’ that they be where I’mma go

LIL WAYNE

my president

today, i elect jonathan, eleven & already making roads out of water

young genius, blog writer, lil community activist, curls tight

as pinky swears, black as my nation i trust the world in his tender

blooming hands, i trust him to tell us which rivers are safe to drink

& which hold fish like a promise

& i elect eve ewing, who i know would ms. frizzle the country

into one big classroom where grandmas finger paint

the national budget & uncles stand around smoking blacks

plotting on stars for our escape    she could walk to the podium

at her inauguration & say, the future is now, & we’d all marvel

at the sun & moon looping the sky like a gif as the cars learned

to fly & our skin grew bulletproof

& colin kaepernick is my president, who kneels on the air

bent toward a branch, throwing apples down to the children & vets

& rihanna is my president, walking out of global summits

with wineglass in hand, our taxes returned in gold

to dust our faces into coins

& my mama is my president, her grace stunts

on amazing, brown hands breaking brown bread over

mouths of the hungry until there are none unfed

& my grandma is my president & her cabinet is her cabinet

cause she knows to trust what the pan knows

how the skillet wins the war

& the man i saw high kicking his way down the river?

he is my president

& the trans girl making songs in her closet, spinning the dark

into a booming dress? she too is my president

& shonda rhimes is my president

& nate marshall is my president

& trina is my president

& the boys outside walgreens selling candy

for a possibly fictional basketball team are my presidents

& the bus driver who stops after you yell wait! only twice

is my pres

& the dude at the pizza spot who will give you a free slice

if you are down to wait for him to finish the day’s fourth prayer

is my president

& my auntie, only a few months clean, but clean

she is my president

& my neighbor who holds the door open when my arms

are full of laundry is my president

& every head nod is my president

& every child singing summer with a red sweet tongue is my president

& the birds

& the cooks

& the single moms especially

& the weed dealers

& the teachers

& the meter maid who lets you slide

& the cab drivers who stop

& the nurse’s swollen feet

& the braider’s exhausted hands

& the bartender

& beyoncé

& all her kids

& the rabbi

& the sad girls

& the leather daddy who always stops to say good morning

& the boy crying on the train & the sudden abuela who rubs his back

& the uncle who offers him water & the drag queen who begins to hum

o my presidents!

my presidents!

my presidents!

my presidents!

show me to our nation

my only border is my body

i sing your names

sing your names

your names

my mighty anthem

niggas!

love them two g’s in the middle

hanging down like hands scooping

water from a river pinked by dusk. i love

how it starts in the nose (nig-) then

books it to the back of the mouth

& smacks the soft palate (-gas).

i love the smell of nigga on the tongue

& how it means that which is me

& them niggas over there too. it do my heart

well to think on niggas, lower my cholesterol

when i holler NIGGAS! when i walk

into a room & be nigga’d right back.

nigga every room i enter, i touch

the knob & nigga the door

into a door to an eternal eastside

hidden in the shea-slick hold of kin

& little bridges clasped black hands make

or how my nigga Josh place

his head against my head

& we each make our nigga a crown.

ain’t that it? my niggas royal me

make me the whole damn castle

& me brick & me moat & i arrows

pointed at the distance ready

to ride for the two g’s of my body

& the g’s that made me

& the g’s before

& the g’s before.

how many of us have them?

friends! if i may interrupt right quick

i know y’all working, busy smoking & busy

trying to not, busy with the kids & moms

& busy with alone, but i have just seen

two boys—yes, black—on bikes—also black—

basketball shorts & they outside shoes, wild

laughing ’bout something i couldn’t hear

over my own holler, trying to steady

the wheel & not hit they lil asses as they swerved

friend-drunk, making their little loops, sun-lotioned

faces screwed up with that first & cleanest love

we forget to name as such & hear me out

i’m not trying to diss lil dude, but in this golden hour

he kind of looked like Francine     off Arthur

same monkey mouth & all, ole & i say HEY! lookin’-ass boy

tho in a beautiful way, the best beautiful

same as i know all of us have looked

when wasted off love. o loves

y’all ugly asses have crowned me the worst names:

wayne brady, gay wiz khalifa, all kinds of bitches

& fags (tho only with my bitches & fags)

&, once, the mark of Buddha the year acne

scored my forehead with its bumpy faith.

o my niggas & my niggas who are not niggas

i been almost pissed myself, almost been boxin’

been tears & snot off your dozen wonders

been the giddy swine dancing the flame.

o my many hearts, y’all booty-faced

weird-ass ole-mojo-jojo-head asses

dusty chambers where my living dwells.

roast me! name me in the old ways, your shit talk

a river i wade, howling until it takes me.

i can’t stop laughing, more river wades

down my throat. could be drowning

could be becoming the water, could be

a baptism from the inside out.

don’t save me, i don’t wanna be saved.

i been died laughing before, been seen

god’s face & you have her teeth, my nig.

but    hers    ain’t as yellow    as    them        saffron shits

you    keep    stashed    in    your    gloryfoul mouth

my friend! my friends! my niggas! my wives!

i got a crush on each one of your dumb faces

smashing into my heart like idiot cardinals into glass

but i am a big-ass glass bird, a stupid monster

crashing through the window & becoming it

just to make you laugh. Andrew used to say

friendship is so friendship                     & ain’t it?

even after Andrew gave it on over to whatever

he was still my nigga. when they turned his body

to dust he was still my dusty-ass boy.

don’t you hear it? the dust on the fan calls me

a bum, say my hairline looks like it’s thinking

about retirement. the dust in the car says i look

like a chubby slave, says i look too drunk, takes

my keys, drives me home. the wind is tangled

with the dust of the dead homies, carrying us over

to them, giggling in the mirror. hear them. hear

your long-gone girl tease your hair on the bus. hear them

rollin’ when you sweep the broom across the beaten floor.

i miss them. all the dead. how young. how silly

to miss what you will become. i apologize.

sometimes it just catches up in me. love

& ghost get caught up in us like wind & birds

trapped in a sheet just the same. & my friends

is some birds, is some chicken-head mofos

who i would legit stomp a nigga for, do you feel me?

when they buried my nigga i put on my Timbs

walked into that hot August tried to beat his name

out the dirt. i beat the earth like a nigga.

i threw hands at the earth like a punk muhfucka

& the ground chuckled, said my nigga. what is you doing?!

you can’t hear the wind drunk off the kindred lent?

can you hear the great roll from way off like a big nigga

laughing in an alley? how your dead auntie laugh

when she see you still ain’t grew into that big-ass head!

like your real friend laugh when you still the same ugly

as yesterday! same ugly as always! same ugly as his last life!

jumped!

there, on the ground like dirt or a bird

December froze & May thawed, blood

misted, crying for any mother, the boy

who called your mama a bitch bleeds

our love for you, his wings frozen & fighting

our gust of sneakers.

we storm him because we love you

& your mama has fed us & only us

is allowed to call her out her name

because we know her name, Phyllis,

& she bad & only we can say so

& when we bad she has permission

from our mamas to beat us like we hers.

we hers like you hers. you our boy.

we pool our punches into the boy

like quarters for a bag of flaming hots.

we make him look like a bag of flaming hots.

lord forgive me, but i don’t regret it

& on the real all these summers later

i miss it. i wish a little bit to gather round

a man & stomp in the name of love

beat what he said about my next to blood

back into his gleeyellow mouth, to make

his mouth a sparkling smashed tomato.

really tho. Leland, you remember

how we beat ole boy? our middle

school ritual, his thirty-second eternity.

later, i licked his blood off my Nikes

& dreamed we were water lilies

holding the water down.

//

they were around me like

nigga1

nigga2            nigga3

nigga4          me          nigga5

nigga6        nigga7

nigga8

but what could be safer

than a circle of boys

too afraid of killing you

to kill you?

the fists that broke my ribs also wanted me to live.

i praise each one true god

for each foot that wasn’t

a sharp anything.

each hand laid upon me like a rude & starving prayer.

i had always wanted 8 niggas on me, but not like that.

after a while i started to        like it?

i leaned into it   unblocked my face.

the bottoms of their shoes the sweet of a well-chewed eraser.

i was their promise. their ink.

you should have heard them laugh

a language so delicious i cracked up cracked grin & all.

i didn’t know

a thing about love

until those boys

walked away

so happy.

my heart pouring from my nose.

saw a video of a gang of bees swarming a hornet who killed their bee-homie so i called to say i love you

fall poem

the leaves done done their annual shimmy.

now the streetlight with no soft green curtain

cuts a silver blade across my bed

& my body. i didn’t want to start with leaves

even though i love how the trees turn the color of aunts

& soul-train-line to the ground each October. no one

wants to hear a poem about fall; much prefer the fallen

body, something easy to mourn, body cut out of the light

body lit up with bullets. see how easy it is to bring up bullets?

is it possible to ban guns? even from this poem?

i lie in the light, body split by light, room too bright for sleep

thinking of the leaf-colored bodies, their weekly fall

how their bodies look like mounds of a tree’s shed skin

a child could jump into them & play for hours.

there i go, talking about our dead & if you don’t think

they are your dead, i’ve run from your hands. they are red

like the tree down the street, a hot-air balloon

of blood, the leaves dyed fruit-punch red, red as a child’s red mouth

after an afternoon spent on the porch with a bag of takis

watching other kids walk by, waiting for kids who don’t

pass anymore on the other side of summer, who maybe go

to a different school or moved out east or made like a tree

& now sleep in a box made from one.

rose

i’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense

o California, don’t you know the sun is only a god

if you learn to starve for her? i’m over the ocean

i stood at its lip, dressed in down, praying for snow.

i know i’m strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.

i know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?

the sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun, everything around you

is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you.

it’s so sad, you know? you’re the only warm thing for miles

the only thing that can’t shine.

the flower who bloomed thru the fence in grandmama’s yard

flowers is niggas too

this here nigga grown

snug into a chokehold

to set him free

would mean to behead him

some would split a nigga neck

let him bleed out tucked behind ear

tupac of a flower

white picket clasping the throat

descendent of a self-picked field

almost miraculous & out of context

like niggas in Utah

grander for his quarantine

how white niggas looked at me sometimes

petaled nigga child special only because it is

divorced from the garden

hands plucking my weedish bouquet

we love niggas we love niggas not

prisoner of wood & accident

he leaned himself into meaning

trapped in observation

well-bloomed nigga

annual like the death of aunties

locked in & strangled pretty

nosey-ass flower peeking his head

in search of greener grass now stuck

in a guillotine refusing to guillotine

assimilated into barrier

black cop of a flower

shimmied into place & now

you can only leave here

dead, silly nigga, fences

are for fences you trespassed

& now you locked up

the fence wears you

like a single yellow hair

you wear the fence

like a little boy

in his mother’s blue gown

drowns or wishes to

why are you here living flower

in a dead tree

why you running from

what still rooted where you started

who the ghost who haunt your dirt

do they slick around your feet

gray as worms do they make

your mind feel like wasps

did you stick your head out

just to breathe only to have

your head bloom bigger

than the window do i pluck

you now or let you wilt on

your own o my nigga

my nigga is death any easier

if you can call your

killer kin

in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say

apricots & brown teeth in browner mouths gnashing dates & a clementine’s underflesh under yellow nail & dates like auntie heads & the first time someone dried mango there was God & grandma’s Sunday-only song & how the plums are better as plums dammit & i was wrong & a June’s worth of moons & the kiss stain of the berries & lord the prunes & the miracle of other people’s lives & none of my business & our hands sticky & a good empty & please please pass the bowl around again & the question of dried or ripe & the sex of grapes & too many dates & us us us us us & varied are the feast but so same the sound of love gorged & the women in the Y hijab a lily in the water & all of us who come from people who signed with x’s & yesterday made delicacy in the wrinkle of the fruit & at the end of my name begins the lot of us

dogs!

scooby doo was trying to tell us something when every time that monster mask got snatched off it was a greedy white dude.

//

in ’97 a black comic gets on stage says, you ever notice how white dogs be like woof woof & black dogs be like ruff ruff motherfuckaaaaa!!

//

the dog upstairs won’t shut up & i’ve thought of ending his noisy little life but i have to remember he matters, he matters & if i did, the brown girl upstairs would cry forever.

//

dog (n.): a man’s best friend. (see: fetch, roll over, K-9, good boy, put down.) ex. my dog died, i had to do it with my own hands.

dawg (n.): a man’s best friend. (see: blunt rolled already, handshake, my nigga, put me on) ex. my dawg died, he did it with his own hands.

//

dogs in this house eat the same thing we do. we eat greens, they eat greens. fried bologna, neck bones leftovers.

… he died from the suga, the gout or whatever came for big mama came back for the dog.

//

everybody love lassie, but what about sounder?

//

possible rite of passage number 37: graduating from outrunning the block’s dogs to outrunning the block’s police.

//

i too been called boy & expected to come, heel.

//

what animorph did you want to be? i wanted to be the boy who turned into the bird limp in the dog’s wet mouth, holding me toward his human saying, i made this for you.

//

the dog upstairs needs to stop running his mouth talking plenty shit i can hear him up there fool don’t think i understand he don’t know i got a bark too teeth too thumbs & a terrible child’s mind.

//

something about Air Bud felt … the talented obedient beast, the roar of the eggshell crowd.

//

dogs aren’t racist but they can be trained to be as can the water as can the trees as can gravity as can anything marked by a pale hand & turned bloodgold, a bitter king’s magic touch.

//

i’m the kind of werewolf who turns into a shih tzu. ruff ruff motherfucka.

//

while grandmama spoke on the clean blood of Jesus, i watched the hounds in the mud hot for anything warm & thought of something better to worship.

//

i stand in the dark bathroom in my tightest shortest short shorts my vaselined legs the only things catching light. i say, i’m a real bitch three times, clap my hands above my head. nothing happens. i walk back into the club, put my hand on a man’s chest & it’s a paw.

//

the gay agenda made CatDog to offer your child’s gender to their seven-headed god.

//

a dead dog is a hero, a dead lion is a hero, a cloned sheep is a miracle a dead child is a tragedy depending on the color, the nation, the occupation or non-occupation of the parents.

//

during the new moon, i switch from an –a to the traditional –er, i raid the farm, smash the melon patch, swallow chickens whole spit out the bones ground down to smoke, howl Geee-zuss! toward the sky’s great nothing.

//

//

dog bred to smell the coke. dog bred to smell the bomb. dog bred to smell the nigger hid beneath the floorboards.

//

dude’s dog won’t leave the room, won’t let his lord out of his sight, won’t let his master disappear, won’t let himself go hungry, won’t let nothing happen to the one who brings the water, even if it means being owned, being witness to his hunger or maybe he’s just dumb.

//

stay. open. stay. look at me. stay. open. teeth. bad. bad. stay. open. treat. treat. pant. wag. treat. good. stay. good. stay.

//

i listen to DMX smoking a blunt doing bout 90 in a 55 when the cop ask if i know why he pulled me over i bark, i’m just trying to be me.

//

the dog upstairs won’t shut up but i can’t hate him, he’s up there alone all day, making noise must be the only way he knows he’s not a ghost.

ode to gold teeth

gold gate of grandpa’s holler

midas touch his blue hum

honeymetal perfuming prayers

crowns who crowned his crowns

made even his vomit expensive

gangster grill before gangsta grillz

marked my granddaddy OG of the gin

sermon & front-porch pulpit

made everything he said sound gold-rimmed

bible or gold-rimmed tires

gangsta white walls, TV antennas

cross the back of your legs talk smart

even his punishments sparkled.

o his golds, when young i thought

your mustard gleam meant my papa

was a kind of hero, alien, or stone

so confused on how he hid

all those suns so near his tongue

his mouth held the day hostage

but didn’t swallow it. o butter glow

country tiara, ghetto kingdom

of molars, glinting hallelujah

pork stuck near the black gums

forgive me, forgive me, citizens

of my papa’s dead mouth

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