Nate Marshall > Quotes

“let me put it to you like this fam: who you believe in is a matter of who you mattered to.”
― Nate Marshall, Finna: Poems

“what it is & will be ain’t yet no word for a world without the cop’s unruly bullet or baton. ain’t yet no word for a world without children starved & lonesome. ain’t yet no word for a world with boundless capacity for care. ain’t yet no word for a world with every bloody debt repaired & repaid. ain’t yet no word for a world with touch exclusively consensual & ecstatic. ain’t yet no word for a world where each mistake is a holy possibility to improve. ain’t yet no word for a world where there are as many genders as dandelion seeds spinning in Spring. ain’t yet no word for a world where every person is vegan & the last meat they ate was the rich. ain’t yet no word for a world with no fear. ain’t yet but we working.”
― Nate Marshall, Finna: Poems

“once Alzheimer’s does what it do you never really have conversations it’s more a man becomes a poem a lot of repetition & love with something indecipherable in between.”
― Nate Marshall, Finna: Poems

“been had a name that was offensive or a love song depending on who held it in they mouth.”
― Nate Marshall, Finna: Poems

“few times each year i am convinced of the end of singleness, the beginning of a singularity, i become convinced of the infinite curve of love.”
― Nate Marshall, Finna: Poems

“picking flowers

Grandma’s rosebush
reminiscent of a Vice Lord’s do-rag.
the unfamiliar bloom in Mrs. Bradley’s yard
banging a Gangster Disciple style blue.
the dandelions all over the park putting on
Latin King gold like the Chicano cats
over east before they turn into a puff
of smoke like all us colored boys.

picking dandelions will ruin your hands,
turn their smell into a bitter cologne.

a man carries flowers for 3 reasons:

• he is in love
• he is in mourning
• he is a flower salesman

i’m on the express train passing stops
to a woman. maybe she’s home.
i have a bouquet in my hand,
laid on 1 of my arms like a shotgun.
the color is brilliant, a gang war
wrapped & cut diagonal at the stems.
i am not a flower salesman.
that is the only thing i know.”
― Nate Marshall

“a few times each year i am convinced of the end of singleness, the beginning of a singularity, i become convinced of the infinite curve of love.”
― Nate Marshall, Finna: Poems