Tauwan Patterson
a Nightmare before Christmas
I don't know how I feel about that,
he shouted,
startling all passengers in the vicinity on the westbound train headed towards the sea.
Did they not see his cause for alarm?
Halloween.
Through the morning sun's golden hued rays that Southern California tree bore strange fruit, a Mummy, swinging loose in the southern breeze. An effigy for crows to pluck
stirring within this witness a gathering of rain, thoughts of trees past, Black bodies as bitter crops
hanging,
holding his twisted mouth and bulging eyes.
Bio
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 recently appeared in the inaugural edition of the online literary magazine Cool Beans Lit and 3rd Wednesday Magazine, 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, and the Rising Phoenix Review. 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.