praise song for what holds you up

(for when it can’t be my two arms)

praise song for what holds you up

because you deserve to float

and salt from every ocean

loves your face

because you deserve to float

and stars from every galaxy

love your face

your place in the universe

stars from every galaxy

may they shine upon you

your place in the universe

is grace

may every sun shine upon you

right where you are

in grace

held by my love

right where you are

salt from every ocean

holds you up

sing now

and know

I received this poem as an ancestral message from my father. I wonder at this early moment he thought about the limits of his life, his strength, his ability to hold and protect. Right now, I am clear that there were many times in his life, and especially as he faced death, when he thought about what structures would support his children after he was not longer embodied on earth. Spoiler alert, he did not create a financial structure that left us all independently wealthy, though I think he tried. And I know he would have very much wanted to do that. And yet. I come back to our collectively favorite Nikki Giovanni proclamation: “Black love is Black wealth.” And now I can hear through the love of my father (who by they way bought us Nikki Giovanni’s poetry for children) the deeper meaning in the words “you deserve to float.” Not as capitalist entitlement, but as a return to the ocean, the sun and the galaxies beyond. You deserve to float. To be held by the universe. To receive love from every direction, in every form. This is a subversive legacy. Especially coming from a family of hustlers. I come by my workaholism naturally. But I deserve to float. It is easy for me to know the truth of that when I look at the young people in my life. Of course they deserve support. Of course they deserve to breathe easy and to know that life-supporting love is their divine gift to receive, not a scarce exception they have to learn. But I struggle to give that grace to myself. In this poem I receive instead of resisting my father’s wish that I have all good things and grace and ease in life. That I know, regardless of what capitalist narratives or my actual bank statement is saying, that I deserve to experience ease and to celebrate what this miracle of a planet is offering me constantly. I deserve to be at home on Earth which as Toshi Reagon often reminds us somehow has exactly the air we need to breathe the water we need to drink, the light we need to grow if we would just recognize it. And you too. You deserve to float. You were in fact made for it. You beautiful being full of air, on a planet made of salt. You being less dense than salt water or soil. With open pores all over the surface of your life. You were meant to receive all the love. Now sing.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

the sun will be bright in your face

and we will be beside you

behind you

we will see you through shadow

and we will be beside you

in our sunglasses and smiles

we will see you through the shadow

while you wonder

in our sunglasses and smiles

we hold you

while you wonder if

we are angels or afterlives

we hold you

and tilt our heads in close

angling after life

we flank your fat

and tilt our heads in close

behind you

we flank your fat the sun

bright in your face

Today I am embracing the brightness of ancestral presence and guidance, especially when life changes at a rate where I really don’t know what I’m looking at. This picture reminds me to remember that what supports and protects me is not actually the clarity of my vision. It is the support of my loved ones. These two archangel ancestors especially, that supports me to move into a future so bright I can’t describe it. As a severely nearsighted person, like my Dad and also like Audre Lorde, I want to be present to possibility beyond an ableist narrative of vision as progress. Of progress at all. I am ready to unlearn my life as an earned achievement and to accept it as a gift. I want to honor the people, the elements the energy that continually gives me this gift I am calling life. I want to affirm that my joy, my future, my success is not limited by what I can see from here. It is not predicated on my excellence as a seeing being. It is often beautifully blurred which is part of the gift of remembering I am not separate from life. I am not dominating life by naming and distinguishing this and that. I am part of life, and on a good day I don’t know where I end. And every day I am held and grateful.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

or “did you ever pet a care bear?”

i fit in the chair with you

you read a book

i won’t remember

about stare and care

you read a book

about core strength

about stare and care

the light we beam

about core strength

not of muscle but

the light we beam

when we dare to say

our hearts are not muscles

what really we mean

when we dare to say

i love you

what we really mean

now i remember

i love you

sit here with you

in the air

It has taken me until right now to realize what the Care Bears were teaching me this whole time. My heart is not a muscle. Of course the blood pumping valve, central metronome of my breathing is a muscle. But the heart, like how we mean heart, transfer center of love is not a muscle. It’s an opening. And openness is a form of strength. In fact, that is my daily prayer. To be strong enough to open my heart to you. Again. To beam rainbows of love upon you like the care bears do. Today I can say what I must have known all along, the power of the care bears, beaming love out of their chests, is not an act of force. It is an act of vulnerability. How open do I have to be that love can flow through with the power to heal, with the power to transform someone who really thinks they are my enemy into an ally? Who among us has so much faith that in the face of attack they open their chest? Seriously. Who does that? Which may be why until today I was afraid to say what I know. What all of us who have survived the death of loved one must know. My heart was never a muscle. It was always a hole. A passageway, variously constricted or open. Where love flows through, or at least leaks out. All around it are muscles, practices, stents. And it is not what I paint on my chest that matters. But what comes through. Lionheart, you got here right on time to teach me what all this strength is for. Not to close and fortify. Not to clothe in armor. But to surrender this great portal of my heart. Each day to let even more love come through. In the photo we are staring at the care bears. But from here I keep staring at you.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

the sun is a smiley face

i am a rainbow

you are a dressed

like a new moon night sky

i am a rainbow

you are the universe

like a new moon night sky

sitting on the floor

you are the universe

next to the record player

sitting on the floor

i lean back on you

next to the record player

the curtains block out

the actual sky

and what it is doing

i lean back on you

smile to gather the galaxy

dressed like the dark

night sky

This is part of what I am learning through loss. That when a loved one dies, what was an earthly relationship becomes a cosmic relationship. And more importantly, I can finally see that all relationships are already cosmic. My stardust daughterhood has always been here. Binary star systems orbit each other, offer light to each other and then something happens. Two distinguishable stars become a different cosmic event as the gas burns out, as the core elements fuse. Something bright happens. Is it death or birth. What my family calls the phenomenon “daddy’s girl” is a form of orbit. All of our relationships are. We get close enough to receive light, to offer light. We keep a pact with the universe to help each other return to the source that we came from. This is our love. What we learn to call loss even though we know the first law of thermodynamics. How it burns to become bright on behalf of those who have left us here to hold their light while we can. And to share it.

*Love and gratitude to Mama for this photograph, to Daddy for this moment and to Daniel Alexander Jones for sparking my interest in binary star systems and also modeling so gracefully the transfer and redistribution of light.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

cold of water

bright of teeth

sun of shoulders

swim the question

bright of teeth

afraid of nothing

swim the question

what holds you up

afraid of nothing

and everything

what holds you up

what holds you

everything

is it love

what holds you

is it time

is it love

sun of shoulders

is it time

cold as the sea

It is taking me a long time to learn this. How supportive the ocean actually is to my life. What support actually feels like. In capitalism we are not supposed to know what actually supports us. And so we poison the water and the air. Ignore the currents and chase currency. We make time into units of productivity. But we long for connection. Oneness. Those moments when we forget to end or begin. Our glimpses of eternity. The moment of this picture was not my first experience of the ocean, but it was an early one. The thing about getting into the water is that at first you feel the boundaries of your skin differently than you could in air. But at some point the temperature balances, especially in the calm water of Rendezvous Bay, Anguilla which some people like to call “God’s bathtub.” Do you have those moments, were all of a sudden you feel the boundaries of yourself? The limit of your skin? Sometimes do you feel separate and afraid? Wondering if you are even worthy of support? I do. In those moments, I am teaching myself to remember the moment of this image my mother made. I know what it feels like to be supported by other people, my father the strong swimmer. Supporting me even now. I know what it feels like to be supported by this environment, the ocean which gave us life, the air that allows itself to move through me. By my mother holding an archive of every age of me. By each of you the moment you forget to pretend these poems are not yours. What holds us. It is love. All the time.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

reaching

at first i didn’t see them behind us

poseidon and the prodigal

i only knew my hand reaching

my wings trusting you

poseidon and the prodigal

of myth and parable

my wings trust you

tall sunscreened and brown

of myth and parable

called father        float       foundation

tall sunscreened and brown

and in my eyes immortal

in my eyes immortal sun

salt and intuition

called father

                  float

                          foundation

you were land in shifting water

sun salt and intuition

i only knew my own hand     reaching

you were land in shifting water

and at first i didn’t see

This morning all I see in this picture is my reaching hand. The Osho Zen Tarot card I pulled this morning is the holy fool. Wearing a VERY similar outfit to me in this picture and also reaching. The mythological and biblical figures I didn’t notice at first the photo are my grandfather and my cousin already in the water. I am thinking about how I and we learn about the concept of father which is mythological and biblical and larger than life and quite a reach if we’re honest about all we project onto it. Even now, as I reach for my father through these photographs I have the opportunity to look at what I am really reaching for. Stability? A place to stand? Protection from drowning? A comforting story? Forgiveness? God? The wonderful thing about being a fool is this rainbowed open heart. These sleeves of air. The coming fall. This unavoidable failure. And if this is what it means to love you, I welcome it all.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

(Thanksgiving ’87)

as if in prayer

hands clasped

eyes wide open

mouth closed

hands clasped

sisters held in blue

mouth closed

as if nothing need be said

sister held in blue

warm and close to winter

as if nothing need be said

listen

warm and close to winter

moustache glasses marking time

listen

we don’t know how much we weigh

moustache glasses marking time

eyes wide open

we do not know how much we weigh

hold us

as if of light

as if of air

as if in prayer

For at least my whole adult life navigating Thanksgiving with family has been a series of difficult decisions. As a Black feminist of indigenous ancestry, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning for how it came to be that we live right now in a society that answers the possibility of love with violence again and again. Thanksgiving has meant conversations to have and not have. Rare opportunities where loved ones have off of work and time travel to the context of favorite foods tinged with disbelief, dressed in a lie we don’t believe in but still use and live inside of in the supposed absence of a better story.

If there is not a better story, let there be a poem that breaks through the story of what is to touch what could be. This year navigating Thanksgiving does not feel complicated at all. Thanksgiving is literally the commemoration of a time when in the name of their so-called freedom a group of people ignored the consequences of the illness they carried with genocidal results. Which means this year, multitudes have the opportunity to relive not simply the mythology of the (historically inaccurate) “first thanksgiving” but also the consequences. Mass death. This year, although like many I miss my family more than I have any other year of my life, there is nothing awkward or confusing about this decision. It is a completely clear no. This year the time travel will not be visiting a childhood neighborhood or eating familiar foods inconsistent with my current dietary practices. My time travel will be through my mother’s photographs as usual. That’s her handwriting on the one photo in the album from Thanksgiving 1987. Am I looking out of the frame into this barely imaginable future? Is that calm exasperation on my father’s face the same expression he would make when I called him from college outraged about US bombings and he would remind me nothing in the history of the US nation state should have me expect anything different.

Really I would rather live through this with you than be right. I continue to love you enough to feel the pain of wanting all of this to be different. I wonder if you know how much you weigh. How your impact moves through air. How much you mean to life around you and beyond you. I want you to know how much it means, where and how you move and breathe. I want you to know how much I love you. This is my prayer.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

stars and moons in black

you lunge in

i hold my first computer

crop two thirds of my name

you lunge in

like a sprinter

two thirds of my name

given by you

like a sprinter

more speed than balance

given by you

i live propelled

more speed than balance

barely touching the ground

i live propelled

by captured moments

barely touching

          the ground

i hold

          my first

computer

          my captured

moments

stars

       and

moons

          in

black

A few weeks ago with the help of my first computerized telescope (a gift from Sangodare) and the advice of my youngest brother Seneca about the rare proximity of Mars, I saw one of the moons of Mars. The Yoruba scriptures teach about how generations of stars release all known elements into the universe, emitting the dust that becomes planets. What I mean to say is I am exactly where I need to be. Amongst the moons and stars as usual. And holding onto this computer like it can hold this cosmic relationship, this black matter I am dressed in, the vast complexity of intergenerational relationship: a poem about my father. It still feels like this. A rushing towards, a leaning down inspiring a solar smile from the girl with the computer in her hands.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

infinity of limbs

denim and brown

i sit on your shoulders

you clasp my hands in yours

denim and brown

an open field of spring

you clasp my hands in yours

as if for warmth

an open field of spring

trees branch

as if for warmth

reach for the sun between clouds

trees branch

and come together at the root

reach for the sun on cloudy days

while intertwining underground

our hands together at your chin

infinite loops of legs and arms

tangled like life loves life itself

i sit on your shoulders

In her poem “Father Son and Holy Ghost” Audre Lorde writes about why she has not yet gone to her father’s grave. In the poem, published in her first collection “The First Cities” she mourns and remembers her father, but most of all she reveals her fear of how death has made him “changeless.” It is that changelessness that terrifies her. She finds it incompatible with her own existence.

One of the blessings of these four years of grief since my father’s death is that in fact our relationship continues to grow and change daily. A transformation I attend to and observe closely through a number of practices and through the hundreds of poems I have written about, for, to and with my father in the intervening time. Time is not as much of an intervention as I thought it was in the infinity of love. While with every new accomplishment I feel the longing for his witness, the sound of his voice in celebration, the hug, the words of pride and affirmation, I am grateful for the undeniable presence of his energy with me and in the world through those same moments. This poem, the first of a series based on photos of me and my father together, mostly taken by my mother Pauline McKenzie is part of my acknowledgement that I am participating in the elevation of his spirit daily and that he has always and still now make my elevation possible in this world and beyond. Thank you. I love you.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.

Photo by Sed Miles

areito[1] for audre lorde

“I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!” -Audre Lorde

you take

my hands

in your hands

spin me around

the universe

round one

the world is full of stars

round two

i realize the stars

are coming out

our eyes ears noses

mouths

*

there is a cord

sometimes

you call it language

sometimes

you call it gut

you string

your shells

and stones

through it

necklaced

by salt

*

a meteor

is a world

on fire

a star

out of place

light rushing

through

the medium

of your face

[1] The name of a Taino dance of healing that continues in Cuban spiritismo communities to this day as the Cordon.  It is a dance comprised by a group of people holding hands.  The healing blessing component of the dance ceremony seeks to harness the cosmic power of the meteor and the storm, spinning participants in a circle counter-clockwise.

This is also your annual reminder that in 1985 Audre Lorde wrote “I’m going to go out like a f**king meteor” in her journal in response to a liver cancer diagnosis. Her doctors gave her 6 months. Instead she died on this day. In 1992. At the peak of the Leonids meteor shower.

Today I woke up at 2am to start Audre Lorde’s ascension day with sacred observation of the Leonids meteor shower on Saponi lands tended by enslaved African geniuses. Thank you Audre Lorde for your blessed example. This salt-water writing feels like fire coming through. It is that cleansing. Today is the birthdate of my 5th book, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. This love. Yes. It does rush through every pore. It is every blessed breath.

https://www.akpress.org/undrowned.html

#pubday #praisethelorde

photo by adrienne maree brown

Yesterday while I was still reeling from the fact that George Floyd, yet another loved one , has been taken by an act of police cruelty, my soul brother Eric Darnell Pritchard began sharing this poem as a resource. I wrote this poem in 2014 and first shared it at the BOLD national gathering as part of a Black Feminist Breathing activity to center us and bring us back to our breathing in the aftermath of our collective witnessing of a police officer choking Eric Garner to death while he cried out for help. I don’t want us to need this ceremony anymore, but we still do. This is a poem to bring you back to your breathing, to remind us all of the sacredness of breathing. I recommend listening to the audio version and breathing along at the stanza breaks. Your breathing is sacred. Our breathing is sacred. I love you.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs · C(h)ant. Breathe.: Returning to Breath for Eric Garner and Many More

Dedicated to Eric Garner

And to Margaret Garner’s Daughter

*take a deep breath everywhere you see a star

i.

*

return to the place

where you learned

how to breathe

*

where night washed itself

into your dreams

*

return

to the place

where you learned

*

breathing was bigger

than you

or your fears of

dogs bats and sea creatures

*

and would continue

all night long

without you trying

to keep it going

*

human freedom is like that

unstoppable

as the ocean at night

sometimes the crashing is just louder

like right now

*

ii.

*

we are feeling it in our chests

right now

the underwater knowing

of upside down justice

that has to right itself

that hasn’t righted itself

*

the sinking feeling

that the chokehold of the state

is more persistent than the ocean

*

it is not

*

iii.

*

if I could

I would bring all our people

right next to the ocean

to just sit

and breathe with the ancestors

*

just listen

knowing all this sand

was bone

and the stars

are just us

reflected

across the black history

of the universe

*

iv.

*

i want every last breath

to be a tide going out

so we can imagine

some baby somewhere

gasping into time

with an unbroken custody

of air

*

i don’t want the choking struggle

the staccato of bullets

shattering the song

of what we know

*

but sometimes

even as the ocean

slaps the sand

it sounds shocked to me

shoreline shaping impact

this is happening

again

*

v.

*

I imagine

Eric Garner

becoming the ocean

like Margaret Garner’s baby

awakening stream

how all blood flows back

to the salt in this water

how something

unstoppable

screams

*

*

Learn more about Black Feminist Breathing.

listen

with salt and fresh renewal

in the miracle of time

the same world

to be sung

the open mouth

my hands your hands

mother god

the source of poems

and look to the sky

coral bone

give me a way

rustic ceremony

study of brown

and remind you

the red line

and remind you

skin your teeth

and remind you

the difference between

a yawn and a smile

the tenacity of sand

the love within

the crown of your hands

(I am closing this series with a poem comprised of the titles of all the poems that came before. In a heroic crown of sonnets, the last poem is made up from the first/last lines of the 14 poems that precede it. But I wrote 21 poems and though some of them were sonnets, most of them were pantoums and a couple were neither. And 8 is my divine number. So I have a poem here of eight stanzas here embracing all of what I found. It is time for me to move on to another part of my archive, another ceremony. But I am so grateful for this experience which I ultimately dedicate to my parents. It has been a blessing to return to this day that was truly a community blessing of, for and by them. This visual document of the people who gathered with them to say YES we will be part of the sacred life of this child was a rite of passage for them as much as it was for me. Their youth, their watchfulness, their open mouths. Their love for me and all the love they called into my life that day and every day after. I am so grateful. And renewed. May you and all who love you live forever in the light of love.)

maybe they are laughing

i turn my head

in the crown of my grandfather’s hand

the cradle of my godmother’s arm

i turn my head

attune my ears

antennae of my godmother’s arm

bends around me

attune my ears

that i might hear

time bend around me

toward another breath

that i might hear

the voice of angels

breathing eternity

never let me go

oh voice of angels

maybe they are laughing

please never release me

from the crown of your hands

(I have been working with this photo album for a while. I wrote over 35 pantoums. I wrote my first heroic crown of sonnets. I returned for the blessings of this day over and over for more than two months as a daily practice. What became visible to me was my longing, some of my old stories, some new revelations and most of all love. This album documents the day of my christening ceremony and I have been sharing and revising it during the corona virus crisis. But this place where my grandfather’s hand touches my head is the true blessing, the real crown. This poem is an acknowledgement and a prayer of what it is to be held and held well, blessed and blessed beyond. Infinite gratitude, infinite love, reclaim your crown.)

do you see the red line in the trees

the hint of falling

do you hear a future calling

when you watch me sleep

the hint of falling

into place

when you watch me sleep

you wonder what of this is dream

get in place

take the picture

you wonder what of this is dream

and what is memory

take the picture

come arrange yourselves

you memorized

what sisters do

come arrange yourselves

to hear the future calling

do what sisters do

you, see?

the red line

in the trees

(This is another poem for my mama and her sister-friends from college. The first photo is the one in the photo album my mother gave me full of photos at the celebration after my christening. It is clearly a few moments before the second photo, which my Auntie Veronica —pictured here with the beautiful cornrows— sent to me recently. Everyone is in formation and smiling in the second photo, the intended result. But I am grateful to also have the first photo, a vision of Black women, chosen sisters, in the process of arranging themselves in relationship to each other. As Audre Lorde teaches us, it may be natural for Black women to love their sisters, other Black women, but in a society that teaches hatred of everything dark and feminine it is also a practice, an intention, a labor-of-love improvisation. Or as Toni Cade Bambara teaches us, via Aishah Shahidah Simmons “sister is a verb.” Yes, something to be studied and celebrated, never to be taken for granted. These sisters are still holding each other, even though two have taken to the sky. I have been observing this miracle whole life and am still internalizing the choreography, improvising across distance and death. The poem questions what is the background and what is the foreground, what is the memory and what is the dream. Most of all I am grateful to be held in the divine light of sistering past, present and future. So this poem is also for you, studying now how to relate, not by default but through intention. What is in the background, what is in the foreground for you now?)

as if i could stand in your arms

white dress longer than my legs will be

marrying me to god

my arm becomes a part of your arm

long white dress of Christian naming

you look at me

my reach becomes a part of your armament

i look somewhere beyond you

you look at me

as if i might tell you something

i look somewhere beyond

as if i hear a voice

and i might tell you something

about miracles and time

another voice will speak to you

through me

in the miracle of time

i will stand one day even taller

through you

through me

through us

you meet again the infinite

(This poem is for my dear Aunt Carol, the epicenter of joy in our family. Aunt Carol fills our lives with laughter and care. It is impossible to spend more than a moment in her presence and not know what it is to be profoundly loved. Aunt Carol you have taught me what it means to live with an abundant heart, and that home is something we make by sharing love. There is a brilliance to that rivaling the brilliance you brought to your career that has shaped our family for the better. In fact before I had the language for it, you were my touchstone. Looking back I see many friendships and mentorships that I nurtured in my life because intuitively I saw an aspect of you, felt an aspect of what I feel when I am with you: safe, seen, held, loved, happy. And this picture may have been one of the first times that I got to internalize that knowing. This poem comes not exactly from that knowing, but from a question that I see in this picture, a wonder. For me this picture, after a traditional christening ceremony, approaches the infinite. There is something beyond what we see here. And it is that beyond that I offer you today Aunt Carol as you engage the mysteries of this phase of your life in a new community, after retirement, with new generations and meanings of family to bless. I want you to know how your love has become my theology, a generous approach to infinity as we find it in each other. I love you always Aunt Carol. And for everyone who is contemplating the beyond, beyond this moment, beyond even life itself, may you remember what you know of love, and who taught you.)

listen uncle

the plant

above your head

knows you better

than your hair do

and though i am small

in your hands

your hands know

each other

better than your mouth

knows what

to say

and mama

the gold you wear

is delicate

and light

it cannot break you

you will break

through it

and

i love you beyond the strength of your hands

i love you more than the glint of your rings

i love you beyond what i can see in blurry daylight

i love you more than anything

and i remember

(I love that in this picture I look like I am making a considered response to something my Uncle Duane is saying. What would that be? The poem imagines it. Ultimately everything becomes I love you. And I am still held in the loose prayer of my uncle’s hands and my mama’s hands in this photo. May we consider our words at this time. May they all be words of love. May we remember that we are all babies, new to this moment without the language to truly hold it. May we remember what this baby knew, we can’t live without each other. Love to each of you and all of us. )

from Boda who survived the middle passage

look

the white dress is a signal

i am back to love you and to breathe

this time the depth is fabric

you will not drown

i am back to love you and to breathe

secrets into your infant ears

you will not drown

this rebirth is for everyone

stories in your infant ears

about whale kin and coral bone

rebirth for everyone

i am home

with your whale skin and coral poems

breath flowing long remember

i am home

a place where we survive

breath flowing long girl, train

this time. depth. fabric.

a place where we survive

take the white dress

as a sign

(Ancestral mother Boda, known in our family’s oral history as an Ashanti woman who survived the middle passage and was enslaved in Anguilla has been coming to me in dreams of wedding dresses for more than 5 years. A signal tapping in to my association of “boda” with the word wedding in spanish. The language of our first captors in the Caribbean. But I recently learned thanks to Katherine Agyemaa Agard that in twi “bota” is is the name of a yellow species of coral. This time I am in the white dress, sewn by my grandmother Lydia, long and layered oceans of fabric. The train of this dress, which my mother playfully holds up, is part of my oceanic training. This is poem is for those of us seeking a sign. And for all of us who need a reminder of what we been training for.)

yetunde returns to touch the cheek of her great great granddaughter

i will need the power in my legs

when i return to earth

i will smile and remember

i am free

when i return to earth

i will see the love i made

unshackled

and remind you

i will see the love i made

from the inside out

i will remind you who you are

i will be the best love possible

from the inside out

i will grow this life

i will be the best love possible

i made it

i will grow this life

i will smile and remember

i made it

with these free fat legs and fists

(This poem is in the voice of my Nana’s great great grandmother. We don’t know her name. Yetunde means “ancestor returned” in Yoruba. So this poem is about what that ancestor, who lived in Jamaica at the time of enslavement would say to her great great grandchild (my Nana) if she came back in the form of a grandchild (me!) The multiple directions of mothering, the embodied memories of freedom, the reflection and the time travel. All of it. This is how we reach each other across seven generations and answer for the world we have left, the world we have made. Remember how free you are.)

three chosen sisters smile

in the foreground

in the background

awning. trees.

in the foreground

their smiles are what they can stand on

gaping branches

undetermined fruit

their smiles are what they can stand on

their arms around each other

everything is possible

they are yet holding and held

their arms around each other

they make a bright study of brown

they are yet holding held

and still alive

they make a bright study of brown

three

chosen 

sisters 

smiling

still

alive

in the back 

ground

(This poem is for three of my brilliant beautiful Aunties. Aunt Andie, Aunt Carol and Aunt Mary are three of my mama’s closest sister-friend from college. Aunt Mary is actually the person who introduced my parents to each other while she was in law school with my dad. There are a lot of meanings of “brown” in this poem. A supreme court decision. My Aunties, Andria Hall—noted writer and journalist, Carol Black-Lemon—award-winning visual artist and Mary Butler—accomplished lawyer are brilliant Black women born in the 1950s who achieved their dreams with greater access than their parents to educational opportunities and support. The ground of my existence. These three women are part of the foundation of my life as a person with the benefit of always being surrounded by Black women who gracefully lived into their creative, intellectual and professional talents. The ground itself. Both my Aunt Andie and my Aunt Mary are ancestors now and the pantoum form I use here falls apart as I witness the joy and possibility of these three young women against a background that also includes death and my longing for their presence. So this poem is also for anyone holding both grief and gratitude for the folks who have made our lives possible.)

i cross my arms

your shadowed eyes

your skin your teeth

and i arise

your shadowed eyes

look down at me

and i arise

but sleepily

look down at me

and find my face

but sleepily

i cradle grace

i cradle grace

you cradle me

and find my face

delightful

you cradle me

and skin your teeth

the light

reaches across

(This pantoum is for my Nana who is the secret star of this christening photo album. She is in so many of the pictures. Even in pictures I thought she wasn’t in I find her earring, one eye, a wisp of hair. She is also the only person other than me who has a complete costume change somewhere in the midst of the day. This poem is a celebration of what it is to be held and smiled upon. I am. We are. Like my ongoing conversations with my Nana this poem also plays with a poetic relationship between Jamaican and American englishes. I love you Nana Nana. Always.)