Poem of the Week

Danez Smith is the author of (insert) Boy, Don’t Call Us Dead, and Homie (Graywolf, 2020). They served as festival director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam and received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. A finalist in the 2015 Narrative 30 Below Contest and a recipient of the 2014 Paris American Reading Prize, Smith lives in Minneapolis.

happy hour

by Danez Smith
for RH


Grandma says she’s going to the funeral to see who’s there
like I say I’m going to get a drink. the woman, not someone
she knew too well, but someone of a similar age & blackness
some southern daughter spun north out of a promise or terror
filled night, who fled into winter to escape the rope, the rope
skinned good ole boys just being boys, but that’s not on her
mind right now, just help me get this necklace on she says
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