Flower Boi

"A nature diary--in which it is human nature up for exploration--MARS. Marshall's FLOWER BOI utilizes received formal conventions in order to articulate that which resists the limitations of form or, as the poet puts it, 'how space can be both void and / full is a trick only the BOI knows well.' Trick? No, there are no tricks or gimmicks here
this is a poet of ravishing innovation. The vowel, that "O," at the center of Marshall's BOI is passageway ('I try to make a map of my body / See which roads lead me to drink from / a river made by my hands ...')
is apostrophe ('You, who turn your palms upward, gaze at
the sky, proclaim I leave myself at the mercy of you ...')
and is, at last, a hero's journey from hole to whole to 'How holy it is, to grab light of us and say, friend ....' I can't imagine a world where every debut is as fearless and brazen as Marshall's Flower Boi"--Tommye Blount, author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue

Poetry. African & African American Studies. LGBTQ+ Studies.