& even the black guy’s profile reads 'sorry, no black guys'

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown (2015)

A contemporary Black poet, Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition” is a short poem that juxtaposes images of flowers, “Cosmos. Baby’s Breath” (Line 8) with the unjust deaths of Black men, whose names are italicized as the concluding flowers of the poem: “John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown” (Line 14). While “The Tradition” addresses a slightly different subject matter than Smith’s “& even the black guy’s profile,” the two poems share the use of contrasting imagery to confront the harsh and often fatal effects of racism on Black men’s bodies in the U.S.

“The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” by Franny Choi (2019)

Franny Choi and Danez Smith are not just contemporaries of one other, but they are also direct collaborators in the poetry world. They have been colleagues together in the Dark Noise Collective, and for several years they have co-hosted a podcast for Poetry Foundation. In “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On,” Choi experiments with the use of prose as a structure for a poem, as well as utilizing anaphora and repetition to similar effect as “& even the black guy’s profile.” Additionally, this poem by Choi shares the use of changing point-of-view to mark the turns of the piece.