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

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( July 4, 2018 [How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This]( [Hanif Abdurraqib]( 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. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 Hanif Abdurraqib. Used with permission of the author. [Hanif Abdurraqib reads "How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This."]( About This Poem “I was at a reading shortly after the election, and the poet (who was black) was reading gorgeous poems, which had some consistent and exciting flower imagery. A woman (who was white) behind me—who thought she was whispering to her neighbor—said ‘How can black people write about flowers at a time like this?’ I thought it was so absurd in a way that didn’t make me angry but made me curious. What is the black poet to be writing about ‘at a time like this’ if not to dissect the attractiveness of a flower—that which can arrive beautiful and then slowly die right before our eyes? I thought flowers were the exact thing to write about at a time like this, so I began this series of poems, all with the same title. I thought it was much better to grasp a handful of different flowers, put them in a glass box, and see how many angles I could find in our shared eventual demise.” —Hanif Abdurraqib [Hanif Abdurraqib]( Hanif Abdurraqib is the author of The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016), his first poetry collection, which was nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. He is also the author of the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017). He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Photo credit: Andrew Cenci [The Crown Ain't Worth Much]( Poetry by Abdurraqib [The Crown Ain’t Worth Much]( (Button Poetry, 2016) "Verguenza" by Rachel Eliza Griffiths [read-more]( "The Gardenia" by Cornelius Eady [read-more]( "Cherry blossoms" by Toi Derricotte [read-more]( July Guest Editor: Adrian Matejka Thanks to Adrian Matejka, author of Map to the Stars (Penguin Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about [Matejka]( and our [guest editors for the year.]( Help Support Poem-a-Day If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a [monthly donation]( or [one-time gift]( to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Sponsors [Advertisement](