320: How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This

How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This

20200214

dear reader, with our heels digging into the good

mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something

about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself

but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown

& lord knows I have been called by what I look like

more than I have been called by what I actually am &

I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this

exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning

something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything

worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive

to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather

clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent

heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning,

you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

"How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This," by Hanif Abdurraqib, from 

Today's poem is How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This by Hanif Abdurraqib.
