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By Danez Smith | Originally Published at Poetry Foundation. Poetry Magazine. March 2014

Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys
killing each other to pray for the ones who do it
with their own hands?

Is that not black on black violence?
Is that not a mother who has to bury her boy?

Is it not the same play?
The same plot & characters?

The curtain rises, then:

     a womb
     a boy
     a night emptied of music
     a trigger
     a finger
     a bullet

then:

lights.

It always drives the crowd to their feet.

An encore
of boy after boy
after sweet boy — their endless, bloody bow.

They throw dirt on the actors like roses
until the boys are drowned by the earth

& the audience doesn’t remember
what they’re standing for.

Danez Smith was born St. Paul, Minnesota. Danez Smith is the recipient of a 2014 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Magazine & The Poetry Foundation. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, VONA, & elsewhere. Danez is the author of

[insert] Boy (forthcoming, YesYes Books) & the chapbook hands on ya knees (Penmanship books, 2013). He was featured in The Academy of American Poets’ Emerging Poets Series by Patricia Smith. Danez is a founding member of the multi-genre, multicultural Dark Noise Collective. His writing has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kinfolks & elsewhere. In Poetry Slam, he is a 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, the reigning 2-time Rustbelt Individual Champion & was on 2014 Championship Team Sad Boy Supper Club. In 2014, he was the Festival Director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam. He holds a BA from UW-Madison where he was a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar.

This piece was reprinted by EmpathyEducates with permission or license. We thank Danez Smith for his kindness and for weaving words and wisdom into a tapestry that touches the heart.