American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [But there never was a black male hysteria]
by Terrance Hayes
But there never was a black male hysteria
Breaking & entering wearing glee & sadness
And the light grazing my teeth with my lighter
To the night with the flame like a blade cutting
Me slack along the corridors with doors of offices
Orifices vomiting tears & fire with my two tongues
Loose & shooing under a high-top of language
In a layer of mischief so traumatized trauma
Delighted me beneath the tremendous
Stupendous horrendous undiscovered stars
Burning where I didn’t know how to live
My friends were all the wounded people
The black girls who held their own hands
Even the white boys who grew into assassins
Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 15, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets. Collected in AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN, Penguin Books, 2018
MoSt will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.