- A Nigger and His Tree
Red boughs, brushfireset the field aflame Tree pimple with walnuts suspended in pus The moss too big to be moss, that shell too empty
to be a boy, lichen too stubbornto be living & trumpetflowers march acrossNew Orleans, Louisiana Rainsweat mats grass, suffocates it, sopping and shaggy, dogtrees dripping
with pine needles needling themselves into amputated branches jutting out torn termite wings Inside his cavity, flies are sewn together by the veins of their wingsmovement: like zip ties orbiting lightning bugs without a blaze:
are just inflated ladybugs In understory, rosette dung & clumped fungi befriend each other under his feet & these leaves: umbrellas with broken stretchers [End Page 107]
Darius Christiansen is a seventeen year-old writer from New Orleans, Louisiana. Darius was introduced to the art of writing from when he would secretly taking his mother’s portfolio of poems with him to school. While all the other students were reading their bibles for early morning mass, he would be reading his mother’s poems. Inspired by his own childhood, Darius pulls a lot of his writing from natural elements and the southern life in which he grew up. He attends the arts centered high school, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, where he studies Creative Writing. He has been published in the literary journal, Umbra, and the inaugural issue of the online literary journal, Umbrat. He considers writing to be one of the best ways to connect with and reach people that are placed all around the world. He hopes to one day be a writer who is able to do just that.