April 2, 2025

Today's poem is from Danez Smith's collection, Homie

I have been a fan of Danez Smith for a while - since I first found his works in Poetry and [insert] Boy on the shelves at Bluestocking Books.

i didn’t like you when i met you

but like the funk of a dude unwashed & sun-whooped

i learned the need. & like dude, you were stank & i

was stank right back, two skunks pissed & pissing, smelling like skunks.

but somehow (was it mutual hate for a stanker fuck? a song

our dueling shoulders found each other in? a synced nod?

being the only of our kind in a room full of not-us?) here we live

two stank bitches, thick as mothers, a lil gone off love’s gold milk.

i didn’t know when i thought, i don’t like that hoe, it was just

my reflection i couldn’t stand. i saw it. the way you would break me

into a better me. i ran from it. like any child, i saw my medicine

& it looked so sharp, so exact, a blade fit to the curve of my name.

what a shame. i was slow to you. walked up on you like a bee trapped

in a car—all that fear pent in my wings, those screaming, swatting giants

& then, finally, the window, the wind, the flowers, the honey

myqueenmyqueenmyqueen!