jungle concrete

jungle concrete

Tauwan Patterson

a blink and you missed it. though you were never looking down. to you it was nothing significant, just another weed running wild, one more hoodlum to be cut down. but all the while it was there, a young, golden brown king without a crown, blossoming something special, up from the underground. head on straight, this small wonder, chest stuck out, pride beaming, it saw you coming, approach. swayed confidently and majestically, lightly cleared its throat. this here ain’t what you think it is! come on now, take a look! with a shrug, you kept it moving. moved fast as if on a highway that bypasses its ghetto city streets. but did you still feel it? that rare specimen planted firmly beneath your feet? blossoming up something special, you snuffed it: the triumphant rose that grew from concrete.

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, 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.