“‘Pages 1–4,’ an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure”
Copyright © 2021 by Nicole Sealey. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 7, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
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Even the gods misuse the unfolding blue. Even the gods misread the windflower’s nod toward sunlight as consent to consume. Still, you envy the horse that draws their chariot. Bone of their bone. The wilting mash of air alone keeps you from scaling Olympus with gifts of dead or dying things dangling from your mouth—your breath, like the sea, inching away. It is rumored gods grow where the blood of a hanged man drips. You insist on being this man. The gods abuse your grace.
2017