“American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin” by Terrance Hayes

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 25, 2017   American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin   Terrance Hayes

Any day now you will have the ability to feed the name Of anyone into an engine & your long lost half brother As well as whoever else possesses a version of his name Will appear before your face in bits of pixels & data Displaying his monikers (like Gitmo for trapping, Bang Bang for banging, Dopamine for dope or brains), The country he would most like to visit (Heaven), His nine & middle finger pointing towards the arms Of the last trill trees of Bluff Estates & the arms Of the slim fly girls the color of trees cut down & shaped Into something a nail penetrates. I admit, right now Technology is insufficient, but you will find them Flashing grins & money in the photos they took Before they were ghosts when you click here tomorrow.            Copyright © 2017 Terrance Hayes. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This is from a series of a hundred or so poems with the same title: 'American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin.' Each poem speaks for itself. Here, for example, technology kills me." —Terrance Hayes   Terrance Hayes is the author of How to Be Drawn (Penguin Books, 2015). He is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.   Photo credit: Yona Harvey Poetry by Hayes   How to Be Drawn (Penguin Books, 2015) "I'm a Fool to Love You" by Cornelius Eady "The Truth the Dead Know" by Anne Sexton "Hunter" by Phillip B. Williams Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. 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