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

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

 

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.