Danez Smith

Danez Smith is our president Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.

Poems

Homie

Lindsay

-"i'm going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense"

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.

i know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?

the sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun, everything around you

is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you.

’s so sad, you know? you’re the only warm thing for miles

because we know how to control ourselves.

what advice do the drowned have for the burned?

what gossip is there between the hanged & the buried?

if i went to jail i’d live rent free but there is no way to avoid making white people richer

a prison is a plantation made of stone & steel

-"waiting on you to die so i can be myself"

i learn this best from the snake angulating

out of her pork-rind dress. i crawl out of myself

Homie quotes

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