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2024 Academy of American Poets Prize

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out of body day 1

by Giovanni Smith

 

usually, the lights click on to exorcise the wicked to unravel the black of sin or bad dreams or chemotherapy’s liquid fingers in innocent cells to save my life let them fall into a bag that night patch after patch goes nothing is supposed to be so but that time it was burgundy and brown to prove to myself i am still alive i stood there as if and wished that it mattered if i turned off the lights refused to find a twitching half-smile pleaded for forgiveness for being and becoming a believer in some other guy winning monstrous silhouettes in front of a bright eyes-wide focus i mean the death of pieces of me unlatched leave me all at once scary drying and pale heaps of crochet locs sitting on the futon in my room i have never seen so many things when the lights are on i almost can’t move but instead of an early casualty of war, i was in an open field in broad daylight my mirrored eyes lips through glass into some damned world unable to wear pain rosy and dipped into a plump pool of life. as someone not myself asked could i love myself this way, too?

 





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