Thursday, June 25, 2020

Poetry Thursday

Contemplating Extinction as Theme in Basquiat’s “Pez Dispenser, 1984”
~Kristina Kay Robinson

for Malcolm Latiff Shabazz

yellow roses in my mother’s room   mean
I’m sorry   sadness comes in       generations
inheritance           split   flayed    displayed
better than all the others

crown                                        weight

the undue burden of the truly exceptional
most special of your kind, a kind of fire

persisting unafraid      saffron bloom
to remind us of fragility   or beauty       or revolution

to ponder darkly              in the bright
the fate of young kings

the crimes for which          there are no apologies.

Copyright © 2020 by Kristina Kay Robinson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 23, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

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