I went to a local bookstore and bought a poetry book.
EE Cummings, I did.
I don’t own a poetry book. But I thought if I were to read a poetry book, it would be best to own the poetry book.
Poems are something you sip. Poems are never satisfied being read once.
I am not good at writing poetry. But some people are.
Until I scrape up the confidence to practice and get good enough to publish something respectable, I will marvel at the unlimited power of limited words through the true masters.
Like this poem, that floored me after I published a lecture about craft:
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying
by Noor Hindi (2020)Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.
Then I read it again. Because poems are never satisfied being read once.