Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones

Author:Saeed Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coffee House Press

In our coolness, we birth anthems only we can hear. Hunters

mistake the chorus for a Black woman alone in a bathtub.

Let the pale reporters and their pointed questions about being

“the first and only” hang from trees like the warnings they are.

Grief #913

I grieve the boy I killed and the country fashioned out

of his bloodstains. I grieve that it was so easy. The knife,

lazy and confident, invading him. This is what love feels like.

I grieve that he believed me. Dumb animal, doe-eyed, ready-made

gift, just another border outlined in barbed wire and crime-scene chalk.

I grieve that, even then, I already knew I’d do it again, again, again,

again. I grieve a continent, nations united by the way terror turns

me on, the hot instant between thrust and gasp—“I want you”

and “I had you.” Again, again, again, again. I grieve my face

onto the covers of history books. I grieve the descendants,

dumb animals, dead-eyed, ready-made gifts. This is what love

requires. I grieve that they believe me.

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