A Poem In Which No Black People Are Dead
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
here, the bouquet of bullets
instead find a patch of fresh dirt
and just like that,
it is spring again.
in this poem, I speak of the grandmother
but not of time’s eager shadow
reaching for her legs.
instead, there is no ancestor
that cannot be touched
by a hand four generations younger.
in this poem, we weaponize joy.
gospel is sung during the week
without burying anyone,
because it is what the living demand.
no one dead looks like anyone’s child here,
because there is no one dead here.
there is no child who is not called a child,
even when they have sinned against the earth.
all of our heroes are still living,
their statues bronze and tall on street corners.
jamal from the barbershop. ms. rose who put her foot
in some fried chicken once, and ain’t never pulled it out.
here, no one asks for permission to celebrate their living
and so it is:
the night pulls back its black mask and gives way to more black.
the type that turns the speakers up loud and runs into the streets.
the type that don’t know how to act,
but ain’t here to impress nobody.
a whole city opens its cracked palms and holds the buzzing within.
in this poem, it sounds like a prayer.
not the hushed kind, but the one that arrives on the lips
after a lover trusts you with their undoing.
the kind that comes from a table
where the spades are up and the tea is sweet.
here, everyone black is a church that never burns.
everyone black is the fire themselves.
eternal light, blood still hot and never on the pavement.
if heaven is a place of no pain, let this be heaven.
here, the god of bulletproof rapture is washing a boy’s feet in the river.
the boy looks up, summons every black bird from its nest.
commands them to cover the sky.