Dear Time
by Danez Smith
i’m jealous. i wish i could write poems
without language like you. the continents
your slow crawling imagery, the city your confession
the flowers your tone, history your irony
and refrain. i can’t write a poem
better than the color blue, no poem can
outdream July, no poem can do what a cantaloupe does
no poem can sing like Luther,
unless it’s a poem by Avery R Young,
who sings his poems with his whole body
and can reorder the time around your heart
make something historical feel
like it’s leaking out a fresh wound.
i once saw him read about Emmett (that Emmett)
at Cave Canem, sang it so blood-flecked
what was healed over and quilted
came apart – Tameka fell like she fell
out the sea, all of us Black and weeping
a century of tears, a million mothers making
use of our eyes. even the man with two watches
couldn’t hold time together, grief
turning all of us to flutes. we had to take
time, take ourselves out of time
remind ourselves what year it was.
art does that, traps you, takes you a second
an hour, a decade to make it
out that stanza, that note, that frame.
part of me is still there, just outside Pittsburgh
the boy, decades dead but somehow
blue and new in our arms, yanked out –
but now breathing – from the river of the poem.
without language like you. the continents
your slow crawling imagery, the city your confession
the flowers your tone, history your irony
and refrain. i can’t write a poem
better than the color blue, no poem can
outdream July, no poem can do what a cantaloupe does
no poem can sing like Luther,
unless it’s a poem by Avery R Young,
who sings his poems with his whole body
and can reorder the time around your heart
make something historical feel
like it’s leaking out a fresh wound.
i once saw him read about Emmett (that Emmett)
at Cave Canem, sang it so blood-flecked
what was healed over and quilted
came apart – Tameka fell like she fell
out the sea, all of us Black and weeping
a century of tears, a million mothers making
use of our eyes. even the man with two watches
couldn’t hold time together, grief
turning all of us to flutes. we had to take
time, take ourselves out of time
remind ourselves what year it was.
art does that, traps you, takes you a second
an hour, a decade to make it
out that stanza, that note, that frame.
part of me is still there, just outside Pittsburgh
the boy, decades dead but somehow
blue and new in our arms, yanked out –
but now breathing – from the river of the poem.
Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and most recently Bluff, a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry (twice), a Lambda Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize and has been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Their prose has been featured in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. Danez lives in the Twin Cities with their people.