To the Emo Child of My Garden

Happy National Poetry Month! We are honored to bring you poems from a special project, “Poetry in Bloom,” a collaboration with O, Miami Poetry Festival, poets Sandra Beasley and Neil de la Flor, and Dolly’s Florist. For all of April, these poems about flowers are being folded into origami and sent out with bouquets from Dolly’s. They also appear on O, Miami and on SWWIM in a variety of accessible ways, including audio, ALT text, and more.

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Sunflowers,
smile for me
this year.

Lift your shaggy faces
high
towards the sky.

Heads up.
Shoulders back.
Don’t slouch, sonflowers.

I have loosened and blessed
every day
the soil for you.

Grow tall this year,
sunflowers,
grow at all.

For Mother’s patience
this year
carries shears.

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Originally from Virginia, Hilary King is a Pushcart-nominated poet now living in Northern California. Her poems have appeared in SWWIM Every Day, Minerva Rising, Fourth River, PANK, The Cortland Review, Blue Fifth Review, and other publications. She is the author of the book of poems, The Maid's Car.