April 24, 2024: How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, Hanif Abdurraqib
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.
--
From the poet:
“I was at a reading shortly after the [2016] 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
Today in:
2023: Lit, Andrea Cohen
2022: Meditations in an Emergency, Cameron Awkward-Rich
2021: How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River, Barbara Crooker
2020: Ash, Tracy K. Smith
2019: Under Stars, Dorianne Laux
2018: Afterlife, Natalie Eilbert
2017: There Are Birds Here, Jamaal May
2016: Poetry, Richard Kenney
2015: Dreaming at the Ballet, Jack Gilbert
2014: Vocation, Sandra Beasley
2013: Near the Race Track, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2012: from Ask Him, Raymond Carver
2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki
2010: Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin
2009: Goodnight, Li-Young Lee
2008: Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje
2007: Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass
2006: Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
2005: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins
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THE TUMBLR HORSE DERBY
WELCOME TO THE FIRST TUMBLR HORSE DERBY (that i know of, anyway)
HOW TO HORSE: 🐎🐎🐎
- Vote for your FAVOURITE horse to make them go faster! (yknow, like those carnival horse derby games!)
MAY THE BEST HORSE WIN
(also sample size reblog yadda yadda yadda HORSE)
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Okey a lot of fucking disgusting stuff are happening all around the world. The genocide of palestinians, the new anti queer law in russia, the congo situation and god knows how many other fucking disgusting inhumane shit is happening in so many places right now.
LISTEN i know that even for people like me who arent victims of any of these situations everything can be so overwhelming right now, and that we may feel hopless and we just dont wanna do anything anymore because everything seems pointless.
BUT FOR THE LOVE OF WHATEVER YOU BELIVE DO NOT BACK THE FUCK DOWN!
Like me, so many other people of the world (even if we belong to a "minority" and for that suffer daily discrimination) we are lucky enought to be ALLOWED to exist because for fucking coincidence we live in places where our goverments or/and the international powers allow us to just fucking be alive.
But there are so many people who the only thing tthey did was being born and for that the goverments decide that they should not exist.
If you were born in palestina to Israel and most of the world you arent fucking allowed to be alive.
If you are queer and were born in russia your fucking goverment says that you are not allowed to be alive.
If you are black in congo you are not allowed to be alive.
If you are native, for most of the goverments in the america continent you are not allowed to be alive.
And if you are a person with vulva/ you are a woman you are not allowed to be alive in most of the fucking world.
And so, so, so many more examples could be add because in this fucking sick world just being ALLOWED to be alive is a privilege.
So PLEASE I BEG YOU, IF YOU ARE IN A POSITION WERE YOUR MERE EXISTENCE IS ALLOWED (even for the dislike of some people) PLEASE, EVEN IF IT HURTS JUST RAGE, SPEAK THE FUCK UP! DONT BE QUIET!
If there are ambassadors of Israel in your country or/and from any other country that prohibits the existence of people, go and RAGE! GO AND DEMAND A CHANGE!.
If YOUR COUNTRY is in ANY way supporting the fact that some groups have the power to decide whether or not some people should be allowed to exist GO AND SCREAM AND SHOUT AND FUKING RAGE.
We have the previlege of being allowed to exist, is our human obligation to speak and shout for those who doesnt have that privilege and arent heared.
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Someone recreated all the Mario Kart tracks in Minecraft, except they were invisible until someone drove on them. Everyone had the easy ones memorised anyway.
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Leftists who only know about America, seeing other countries: Getting a lot of American racial framework vibes from this...
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