“Seasons in Brooklyn”

Malik Windsor

Our bright blue ceiling is a canvas

Littered with specks of precipitation 

Dripping h2o on our grass green floor

Sprouting life, death, and weeds

Like tears spring from the soul’s windows 

Until the foundation is a desert

As we step into the solstice my skin becomes the desert

The fire red sun heats the dark brown canvas

And shines through windows 

Muddied with dirt and precipitation

Midnight meetups mimicked forest fires as we burned weeds

Collecting ashes on the bathroom floor

Like the darkness of the ocean floor

Basements store secrets hotter than the desert

Where gossip circles plant rumors in driveways with the weeds

And skyscrapers hide the bright blue canvas

Like the clouds hide the sky amidst precipitation

Sprinkling sadness on apartment windows

Water drizzles from icebergs hanging out of windows 

Like rugs, flattened squirrels decorate the asphalt floor

While the pigeon clouds drop precipitation

Dry and sticky like plants in the desert

Like billboards stick to the Barclay’s canvas

High above the gardener in the weeds 

Think of cows on a hunger strike we legalized the weeds

Now there’s fewer faces pressed against bulletproof windows

But like vines chalk lines still grow on every canvas

Spread out like slithering snakes on the floor 

Of a bloodthirsty desert

Begging for blood filled precipitation

Winter construction flings concrete precipitation

Into flakes of snow atop gutter weeds

Reminiscing warm days in the desert

As the green moss climbs down abandoned windows

Like lava makes its way to the floor

Dispersing ash across the bright blue canvas

Eastern Parkway desert white with precipitation

A snowy canvas marred by weeds

Icicles hit windows while hail beats the floor

Malik Windsor’s poem, “Seasons in Brooklyn,” is the winner of the Black History Month’s Big Read Contest in Poetry.