Moonflower: Poems (Paperback or Softback)

Moonflower by Phillip Shabazz is a collection of poems that capture the experience of living through prolonged barriers, disparities, and challenging times. Written in a meditative, identity-based style, the poems resemble an urban tapestry, touching on the cost of progress and the fading spirit of community in the early twenty-first century. Moonflower draws upon a symbol between the journey of the speaker and the contemporary American experience, reflecting on the external and internal conflict between nihilism, hope, and redemption.

The collection emphasizes the resistance and steady blossoming of the moonflower, despite the struggle, if only to live for one beautiful night. There pervades a sense of possibility in the rise of determined voices who have come of age in the quest for liberty, democracy, and happiness. The poems pay homage to other artists including Langston Hughes, June Jordan, and Georgia O'Keefe.

Phillip Shabazz serves as a poet-in-the schools of North Carolina and works as a teaching artist. He is the author of three poetry collections and When the Grass Was Blue, a novel in verse. His poems have been published in journals including the Florida Review, New Critique, K'in, Broadkill Review, Mason Street Journal, and Thimble.