Mausoleum of Flowers

From Kendrick to Kanye to a Sunday in Oakland with Frank Ocean’s falsetto in the foreground, Mausoleum of Flowers is still life against the backdrop of demise. This sophomore collection grabs fate by the throat and confronts it, placing the focus on what it means to live despite your friends dying beside you. This collection melds the exploration of spirituality, rebellion, and Black tradition. Summerhill’s poems invite the reader near in order to self-excavate and explore tones of loss, love, and light.

Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet, performance artist, and scholar from Oakland, California. His work has been published in Obsidian, Rust + Moth, COG, Columbia Journal, The Hellebore, Gumbo, The Lily Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His collection Divine, Divine, Divine (Nomadic Press, 2021) was a semifinalist for the Wheeler Poetry Prize and a semifinalist for the Saturnalia Poetry Prize. A Watering Hole fellow, Summerhill is the inaugural poet laureate of Monterey County. He lives on California’s central coast and is an assistant professor of poetry / social action and composition studies at California State University, Monterey Bay. His second full-length book of poetry, Mausoleum of Flowers, was released by CavanKerry Press in 2022.

from sitting in a wicker chair against floral wallpaper in oakland heat

their pants starch-creased and hovering
above their snakeskins like halos

Hueys in a Black beret—

but gone, anyway—

what’s blood without a body to show for it?

in the states, what is more righteous than a gun
and a spear sitting
at the left hand of god

on a wicker chair
in oakland?

from sunday in oakland

it’s sunday. & if there was a day of the week to sink into
yourself, it would have to be the lord’s day, no matter your
position to god. you are no exception to this rule. you sit
at the edge of a bed that is also half machine & ask me to
turn the tv down before, in a swift motion, you bring
your legs to rest on your mattress. their stiff landing,

the last thing i hear from you. & your breathing slows almost
still. your nasal passages soften as if rehearsing how to leave
gently & i’m reminded how some stars we admire don’t exist
anymore. how, by the time we praise them, they’ve already
shrapneled into god’s palms—

when we say it’s in us, not on us

okay, so boom: we die but don’t die, like hip hop or Tupac, but
more serious like demigods playing spades / cutthroat / we bleed &
flowers bloom where the drops land / american fruit / skin bruised
/ juicy / rich in vitamin a, b, c, d & endurance / got plenty of soul /
call it the fight organ / it stays and stays like kin / our blood got fist
/ & if that don’t make sense / consider this: you can’t make gumbo
without the roux

The assemblage of poems in Daniel Summerhill’s Mausoleum of Flowers creates an umbrella of memory through which language becomes the salve, the armor that allows these words to resurrect into something beautiful by living and reliving history. These poems are aware and cognizant of a social condition where silence is not an option, and yet, the poems are tender and loving—aesthetic beauty on the poet’s terms.
—Randall Horton, author of #289–128: Poems

Summerhill’s name precedes him in the world of these poems where Black folks are “basking in the sun around lake merritt,” where the speakers “bleed & flowers bloom . . . american fruit.” This is a voice speaking from, not a voice speaking for. A voice declaring “i, too, am perennial.” It is the poet’s eye that redeems, making lists of what is blooming around him: an old Buick’s exhaust cloud, a collarbone forming “in a mother’s round belly,” a Frank Ocean chord progression. Nothing is left out here, not even fear, and everything that remains flowers. Reading these poems—I remember who we are, I notice redemption more. Summerhill muses on the specter of death called America, but in a place called Oakland his verse is “very much alive.”
—Joy Priest, author of Horsepower

A writer, who, indeed, “must have God’s attention.” What a blessing it is to see Daniel B. Summerhill render his memory in grace, in ugliness, and most importantly, in hue. These poems, though new to us, have simmered in season and in sun. What an amazing Black writer, unafraid to wrap himself in his own language. Summerhill asks questions in his work that, today, I cannot answer, so I must return.
—Jasmine Mans, author of Black Girl, Call Home

96 pages
Daniel B. Summerhill
Pub date – April 2022
Trade paper – 6.5 x 9″
$18
ISBN 978-1-933880-91-4
Emerging Voices – Poetry