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    Black Movie
    Black Movie
    Black Movie
    Ebook51 pages26 minutes

    Black Movie

    By Danez Smith

    4.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    2014 Button Poetry Prize Winner

    "These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make 'a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.' That's no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith's way–saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats."–Marcus Wicker "Danez Smith's BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America."–Rain Taxi
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherButton Poetry
    Release dateJan 31, 2020
    ISBN9781943735099
    Black Movie
    Author

    Danez Smith

    Danez Smith is the author of [INSERT] BOY (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His 2nd collection, Don't Call Us Dead, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. He is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on ya knees and black movie, winner of the Button Poetry Prize. His work has published and featured widely including in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Buzzfeed, Blavity, and Ploughshares.

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    4.5/5

    81 ratings1 review

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    • 4/5
      I couldn't grasp everything that I read, but what I did grasp was an honest poetic account of what it means to be black in America.

    Book preview

    Black Movie - Danez Smith

    Singleton

    SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE HOOD

    In the film, townsfolk

    name themselves Prince Charming,

    queue up to wake the sleeping beauty.

    Let’s name her Jamal.

    Let’s make her everyone’s brother

    or play cousin. All the princes

    press a kiss to Jamal’s wax-dipped lips.

    All the princes sing songs & kill dragons

    but Jamal won’t wake up.

    You mad? This ain’t no kid flick. There is no magic here.

    The fairies get killed too. The kingdom has no king.

    All the red in this cartoon is painted with blood:

    the apples, the velvet robes, Jamal’s cold mouth.

    BOYZ N THE HOOD 2

    Let’s not mention the original

    nor cast any boyz at all.

    The whole thing is a series

    of birthday parties for the child

    who lives in the picture frame.

    Every year we watch his family

    light candles on a blue cake.

    Every year we watch the family

    watch their home burn to the ground.

    The movie gets old. The boy never will.

    JIM CROW, ROCK STAR

    picture him up there!

    seersucker cut-offs too tight

    cotton shirt freshly picked

    & exposed belly, pink cock rocking

    a guitar made from your aunt’s bones

    strung with your great-granddaddy’s

    stretched out beard.

    no fireworks or back up dancers,

    he barely sings above a mosquito-wing hum

    but you can’t turn away, his foot

    pressed into the stage like a neck

    masked in a hood of blonde curls.

    wicked show! when’s he’s done

    you can’t even clap, but the encore?

    just when you think

    the lights are going ghost

    he scans the crowd, picks

    the youngest brown boy

    within reach, hands him

    a pistol, whispers

    play.

    A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE IN THE HOOD

    could

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