"American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin" by Terrance Hayes

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( November 15, 2017 [American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin]( [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 [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2017 Terrance Hayes. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem “Prime thanks to poet Anthony Butts who, many years ago, told me he was writing a book called Male Hysteria. Unforgettable title. Maybe I’m not remembering it correctly. This sonnet is one lanky sentence and several clanging fragments. It’s both dream and memory; ode to high-tops, criminal elegy, testimony, fantasy. It’s crystal clear to me and totally hazy.” —Terrance Hayes [Terrance Hayes]( Terrance Hayes’s most recent book is How to Be Drawn (Penguin Books, 2015). His new book, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, is forthcoming from Penguin Books in June 2018. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Hayes is also a professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. [more-at-poets]( [How to Be Drawn]( Poetry by Hayes [How to Be Drawn]( (Penguin Books, 2015) "juxtaposing the black boy & the bullet" by Danez Smith [read-more]( "litany" by Mahogany L. Browne [read-more]( "The Tradition" by Jericho Brown [read-more]( Poem-a-Day If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a [monthly donation]( or [one-time gift]( to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! [Advertisement]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Advertisers & Sponsors [Advertisement]( [Advertisement]( [Advertisement](