It won’t be a bullet

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Light and Moon

Smith uses several metaphors in the poem “it won’t be a bullet” to convey ideas about life and death. They include “a bullet / becoming a little moon” (Title and Line 1) and “until light outweighs us, & we become it” (Line 9).

These two metaphors suggest the cosmic binaries between light and dark. Since time immemorial the moon, sun, stars, and other bodies have been used in poetry to suggest a higher being that is eternal and all-seeing. Because these celestial bodies exist above the Earth, they have a vantage point that allows them supreme vision and the power to illuminate the darkness. The moon can further be a symbol of bringing knowledge in a time of ignorance because it reflects light in the night sky. Likewise, the term “light” can imply a multitude of positive cosmic interventions—God, the soul, benevolence, or the bestowing of “enlightenment.” Conversely, darkness can imply ignorance, evil, or deep aloneness.

The way Smith uses light in “it won’t be a bullet,” saying that they will “become” light (Line 9) as they grow “thinner & thinner & thinner” (Line 8), suggests that death and dying is a spiritual act. As the speaker of the poem gets closer to death, they also get closer to the cosmic and the all-knowing.

Catalogue of Ways to Kill a Black Boy

The metaphor Smith uses for their body, which will be left behind after their death, is that it will be “buried between the pages stuck together / with red stick” (Lines 5-6). Whereas the dying person becomes a source of light as they die, the body that is left behind is “buried” (Line 5), suggesting that the body is in darkness. Moreover, the body is stuck and “buried” (Line 5) in “the catalogue of ways to kill a black boy” (Line 4). These two uses of metaphor suggest that the body, in earth, and perhaps the society that exists on Earth, is dark, heavy, and closed like a book.

This is especially ironic because the connotation of a book is that it brings knowledge, which should bring “light” (Line 9) to the people who read it. However, the book that Smith references is a “catalogue of ways to kill a black boy” (Line 4), which suggests a perversion of knowledge. People are using knowledge in the form of a book to spread information that shuts out a light, kills innocents, and paradoxically brings greater sadness and darkness where it is meant to bring illumination. This metaphor poses a stark contrast to the metaphors of light and moon that the speaker associates with death, suggesting that the speaker and others like them will be illuminated in death, like a light that cannot be buried or destroyed.