By Danez Smith
For Claire
so much someday due to us
the right tomorrow always on delay
so much soon gone rotten
in the barrel, and don’t get me
started on the never now future.
i say we kill Time, since killing God
did nada. i say we cut Time open
and find what’s owed to us inside.
it might make a mess: the dinosaurs
might learn Greek, the slaves
could escape on spaceships,
Carnival cruise ships on rescue missions
fleeing Auschwitz riding waves
of earth, maybe a hole
would open under every king, slaver
or banker, maybe, gutted, Time
would rearrange itself, maybe
never a Nakba, maybe
the bomb would be faulty, falling
in Nagasaki with a thud and not a boom
kill Time and the birds would be
our presidents and sign treaties
with the rodents and the fish.
no grandma would ever die
they’d get older and older
until they fall asleep in the good chair
chests cresting forever like a blessed tide.
kill Time none of our grandfathers were soldiers,
no war, so they became dancers,
librettist, florist, teachers, they married
the boy after all. dead men come back
at peace with the country within them.
kill Time there’d be no America.
Europe would stay in Europe.
Columbus would be a rumor
haunting the ocean, hungry for shore.
Kill Time and one Korea. Africa
untouched. Marx would have
nothing to write about, spends his life
on a farm with Fanon raising Dodos.
we cut Time’s head off
and out comes a table made
of yesterday, piled high with bread
and fruit and rice and beans and
not a single thing who breathes
or mothers. all of our mothers
come crawling out of Time.
they sit at the table carved from a tree
that’s never heard of a noose.
we wash their feet
in roses and oil. every father
says a prayer that sounds like sorry
or they have nothing to be sorry for
or they have no hands, the price of saving Time.
maybe there’s music playing
or it’s just the drum
of an infant’s heart with a mic pressed
to her chest as she’s being tickled.
maybe all the children are alive.
all the children are alive.
all the children will live!
all the children will live!
all the children will live!
all the children will live!
all the children alive!
all the children alive!
all the children alive!
all the children alive!
all the children alive!
friend, let’s grab the blades!
Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Bluff, a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the National Book Award. Their prose has been featured in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. Their fifth collection – Love, Time – will be published Fall 2027. They live in Minneapolis with their people.
Josh Kennedy is a homegrown photographer from Long Beach! He is a nerd first, photographer second, and college student third (he just got accepted into his first choice college!) He’s been learning and doing photography since just before the pandemic. He hopes everyone loves his photos, and if you want to check out more please check out his Instagram (@john_photographer_kennedy) and check out his Cara if you wish to see his portfolio! (You can find the link on his instagram bio!)