A poem for Wednesday

By Mahogany L. Browne

Has written about poetry being dead as if no other stanzas
have been structured to decolonize the page in the past 100 years.

The contemporaries fail to pique his interest. Such a fickle heirloom,
to suggest something has died because you see no value in its pulse.

Something about nature that dwarfs the smallest of us stationary.
Congress is the nature of politics. Flint water is the nature of greed.

Lenape land grieves the nature of our gluttonous humanity. Chlorophyll
will coax the green to disappear until yellow, then orange until crisp.

One hundred miles from the city of broken windows, a forest floor mimics
a schoolyard full of children—an active-shooter drill begs them to play possum.

Mahogany L. Browne is the first-ever poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center. She is the author, most recently, of I Remember Death By Its Proximity to What I Love.