I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense – Michigan Quarterly Review
Danez Smith Head Shot

I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense

Danez Smith’s poem, “I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense” first appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Summer 2015 issue.



O California, don’t you know the sun is only a god
if you learn to starve for him? I’m bored with the ocean

I stood at the lip of it, dressed in down, praying for snow
I know, I’m strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.
I know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?
The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you
is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you

& it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles
& the only thing that can’t shine.

 


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