Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 18, 2023 Edition): "dream where every black person is standing by the ocean” by Danez Smith

The week’s poem is a piece from Danez Smith. Danez is a queer-identifying, non-binary poet, writer, and performer. In 2014, Danez won the Individual World Poetry Slam and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry for their book [insert] Boy. Their poetry collection Don’t Call Us Dead was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2017. Danez’s work as a poet, writer, and performer lies at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, societal definitions of masculinity, desire, gender identity, trauma, and joy.

The following piece is called “dream where every black person is standing by the ocean.” In this piece, Danez focuses on the generational trauma of the ocean, to those Black lives lost through kidnapping and chattel slavery as Africans were shipped to sales hubs via boat. This piece, while brief, is layered with the weight of generational trauma and loss with melancholy hints of rebirth.

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean

& we say to her

what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

& she says

that was ages ago, you’ve drunk them by now

& we don’t understand

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us

walks to the water’s lip, shouts Emmett, spits

&, surely, a boy begins

crawling his way to shore

You can learn more about Danez Smith here.