Black Movie
By Danez Smith
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
"These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make 'a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.' That's no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith's way–saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats."–Marcus Wicker "Danez Smith's BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America."–Rain Taxi
Danez Smith
Danez Smith is the author of [INSERT] BOY (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His 2nd collection, Don't Call Us Dead, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. He is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on ya knees and black movie, winner of the Button Poetry Prize. His work has published and featured widely including in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Buzzfeed, Blavity, and Ploughshares.
Read more from Danez Smith
Don't Call Us Dead: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Queer Hoe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Black Movie
81 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I couldn't grasp everything that I read, but what I did grasp was an honest poetic account of what it means to be black in America.
Book preview
Black Movie - Danez Smith
Singleton
SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE HOOD
In the film, townsfolk
name themselves Prince Charming,
queue up to wake the sleeping beauty.
Let’s name her Jamal.
Let’s make her everyone’s brother
or play cousin. All the princes
press a kiss to Jamal’s wax-dipped lips.
All the princes sing songs & kill dragons
but Jamal won’t wake up.
You mad? This ain’t no kid flick. There is no magic here.
The fairies get killed too. The kingdom has no king.
All the red in this cartoon is painted with blood:
the apples, the velvet robes, Jamal’s cold mouth.
BOYZ N THE HOOD 2
Let’s not mention the original
nor cast any boyz at all.
The whole thing is a series
of birthday parties for the child
who lives in the picture frame.
Every year we watch his family
light candles on a blue cake.
Every year we watch the family
watch their home burn to the ground.
The movie gets old. The boy never will.
JIM CROW, ROCK STAR
picture him up there!
seersucker cut-offs too tight
cotton shirt freshly picked
& exposed belly, pink cock rocking
a guitar made from your aunt’s bones
strung with your great-granddaddy’s
stretched out beard.
no fireworks or back up dancers,
he barely sings above a mosquito-wing hum
but you can’t turn away, his foot
pressed into the stage like a neck
masked in a hood of blonde curls.
wicked show! when’s he’s done
you can’t even clap, but the encore?
just when you think
the lights are going ghost
he scans the crowd, picks
the youngest brown boy
within reach, hands him
a pistol, whispers
play.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE IN THE HOOD
could