TAUWAN PATTERSON

#DUDES

head,
              cocked.

eyes,
              upward.

lips,
              part.

pause.
              opened.

eyewitness news

swallowed
              the golden ticket

fingerprints tasted,
              traced

              along gum lines —
                           aimed —

                           fired —
                                       repeat —

hearts, stars, horseshoes. clovers and blue moons.

I  rubbed the cat.

tested the water,

fed the rabbit,

unleashed the dragon.

gently touched the ladybug.

made myself an epic acquaintance intimate

with the world/

clouds/

and rainbows/

rain/sun/dirt/

and worms/

lightning/thunder/shapes

and numbers/

streets/parks/people/and cars.

how else could I have learned the world?

NOTES:

"eyewitness news" contains lines and words from Philip Schaefer and Jeff Whitney’s collaborative poem “Boiled Noise."

"hearts, stars, horseshoes. clovers and blue moons." contains lines and words from Elizabeth Paul’s “Of All Possible Forms” which is taken from her collaborative piece with Rebecca Hart Olander, “How the Letters Invent Us : A Correspondence."

Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a Black + Queer Poet and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. His work has appeared in online literary magazines Cool Beans Lit, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, and Muse-Pie Press' Shot Glass Issue #41, and will also appear in the forthcoming Moonstone Arts Center anthology Which Side Are You On?!, the Winter Issue of Rise Up Review, Porkbelly Press' Love Me, Love My Belly zine, the Rising Phoenix Review, the Academy of the Heart and Mind, and The Amazine. With his poetry Tauwan aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.