Terrance Hayes > Quotes

“I am carrying the whimper
you can hear when the mouth is collapsed, the wisdom
of monkeys. Ask a glass of water why it pities
the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.
Brothers and sisters, when you spend your nights
out on a limb, there’s a chance you’ll fall in your sleep.”
― Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

“Trouble is one of the ways we discover the complexities Of the soul.”
― Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn

“This is what it means to believe in ascension and fear climbing.”
― Terrance Hayes

“I’ll eat you to live: that’s poetry.”
― Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

“Look, the world is everywhere: satellites, end tables, the pink and white poinsettias outside the church; reunions and degrees. All those radiant asterisks . . . Soon it will all make sense.”
― Terrance Hayes, Wind in a Box

“When the wound is deep, the healing is heroic. Suffering and ascendance require the same work.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“You will never assassinate my ghosts.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“I wish I could weep the way my teacher did as he read us Molly Bloom’s soliloquy of yes.”
― Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

“If you and every person in the county mailed
me an envelope of five to ten dollars, I think
I could rehabilitate the sheep.”
― Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

“It might be the white woman or man our son or daughter will marry and the white woman or man our grandson or granddaughter will marry, all of them wading into the future until one of our line claims to be Sicilian. Leave instructions: the granddaughter of our granddaughter shall be named Cicily.”
― Terrance Hayes, Wind in a Box

“It's not the bad people who are brave I fear, it's the good people who are afraid.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“I'm a time lord. My armor is flesh and spirit. I carry a flag bearing a different nation on each side. I carry money bearing the face of my assassins.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Can you remember the womb? How, in the moments before birth, The lines were washed from the map That told the route you’d come?”
― Terrance Hayes, Hip Logic

“My mother was a dark red head wrap. Her life had been heavier than the fire she carried on her back.     This is the meaning of the past, Boy. There were maps & scriptures carved into my palms, whole towns”
― Terrance Hayes, Hip Logic

“I believe everything is a metaphor for sex.”
― Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

“Give the world half of what Nina Simone gave it, and you have lived an exceptional life.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer / A nail, you ain't thought of the nail correctly.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“(A certain nobility is implicit in saying what I don't believe and hoping you believe it.)”
― Terrance Hayes

“Thus, I am here where poets come to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice, something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables
of debris. I know all words come from preexisting words and divide until our pronouncements develop selves.”
― Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

“I remember my sister’s last hoorah.
She joined all the black people I’m tired of losing,
All the dead from parts of Florida, Ferguson,
Brooklyn, Charleston, Cleveland, Chicago,
Baltimore, wherever the names alive are
Like the names in graves. I am someone
With a good memory & better imagination.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Wind in a Box"

—after Lorca

I want to always sleep beneath a bright red blanket
of leaves. I want to never wear a coat of ice.
I want to learn to walk without blinking.

I want to outlive the turtle and the turtle’s father,
the stone. I want a mouth full of permissions

and a pink glistening bud. If the wildflower and ant hill
can return after sleeping each season, I want to walk
out of this house wearing nothing but wind.

I want to greet you, I want to wait for the bus with you
weighing less than a chill. I want to fight off the bolts

of gray lighting the alcoves and winding paths
of your hair. I want to fight off the damp nudgings
of snow. I want to fight off the wind.

I want to be the wind and I want to fight off the wind
with its sagging banner of isolation, its swinging

screen doors, its gilded boxes, and neatly folded pamphlets
of noise. I want to fight off the dull straight lines
of two by fours and endings, your disapprovals,

your doubts and regulations, your carbon copies.
If the locust can abandon its suit,

I want a brand new name. I want the pepper’s fury
and the salt’s tenderness. I want the virtue
of the evening rain, but not its gossip.

I want the moon’s intuition, but not its questions.
I want the malice of nothing on earth. I want to enter

every room in a strange electrified city
and find you there. I want your lips around the bell of flesh

at the bottom of my ear. I want to be the mirror,
but not the nightstand. I do not want to be the light switch.
I do not want to be the yellow photograph

or book of poems. When I leave this body, Woman,
I want to be pure flame. I want to be your song.

Terrance Hayes, Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006)

When I leave this body, Woman,
I want to be pure flame. I want to be your song”
― Terrance Hayes, Wind in a Box

“No one
Mentions Jesus' sister. Nothing is written
About her. She had no children, she was in her
Forties the first time she turned water into wine.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“WILLIAM H. JOHNSON —a letter home, circa 1933   Forgive this letter covered in paint. There are no rags around me. I cannot tell you where I am, but where I ain’t.     I am not where the color of my skin taints Everything. Remember the way folks looked at me When I walked through Florence covered in paint?     There, I was less than nothing. I took a train To Harlem; a ship to Denmark to be free. I can only tell you that here, I ain’t     Who I used to be. I am a Negro who has lain With a white woman in a foreign country. Momma, forgive this letter covered in paint.     I ain’t coming back. Here, no one complains When Holcha & I kiss in the street. Color doesn’t tells us what we are & what we ain’t     Never going to be. I have left my name On the walls of a dozen museums & galleries. I have covered my face in paint. I cannot tell you who I am, but who I ain’t.”
― Terrance Hayes, Hip Logic

“Assassin, you are a mystery / To me, I say to my reflection sometimes”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“In this we may be alike, Assassin, you & me: we believe
We want what’s best for humanity. I'll probably survive
Dancing with the kinds of people who must find refuge
Among the sweat & rancor of a Fish & Chicken Shack
But Assassin, they'll probably murder you. Do you ask,
Why you should die for me if I will not die for you? I do.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Possibly twilight makes blackness dangerous
Darkness. Probably all my encounters
Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say,
A nigga can survive. Something happened
In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson
And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened
In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens
Almost everywhere in this country every day.
Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters.
You won't admit it. The names alive are like the names
In graves.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Nothing saddens me more
Than Nigger, one whose master has no Lord.
No word leaves me more graced by shame.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Suppose you could speak nothing but money
And acrimony. Suppose all the sunflowers
Van Gogh destroyed, all the stones in Virginia’s
Pockets & all the stones Georgia painted as vaginas
Were simply a matter of making something greater
Than money. Prince taught us a real man has
A beautiful woman in him. Suppose we cannot
Forget what happened in Money. Suppose
You’re someone who celebrates Thomas Jefferson’s
Birthday. Suppose he was someone whose love
For a black woman was blinded by blackness,
Hers & his, yours & mine. I ain’t mad at you,
Assassin. It’s not the bad people who are brave
I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Assassin, you are a mystery to me, I say to my reflection sometimes. You are beautiful because of your sadness, but you would be more beautiful without your fear.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“May all the gold you touch burn, rot, and rust.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin