by Aja Monet
where magic was wise and slaves unchained.
i uncover the lantern of living in eyes and the world is unafraid.
eye contact as portals between then and forever.
a creature crouches in the cry, a canvas in the iris, a pillow
where the looking lay
as we rinse the silence from all our sisters.
yesterday
i was an explorer
but tomorrow
tomorrow
i am the shore,
meeting the sand with every tide
the sea returns to me
i am forever in debt to the way of rinsing
how water litters the land,
nothing belongs to me
i merely am
today
tomorrow
yesterday
time
time is a fleeting fool
who dares own that which you are, the air?
have you a chain to hold us?
the world cannot contain our ways.
yesterday i was a poet
but tomorrow i am an emcee
a seagull of secondhand verses
writing with rhythms and reasons
still a river
i flow
tomorrow
name me legit
i am the earth
babbling to itself, the beat, an eardrum.
i leak music and lay with light.
i was a voice repeating the sound
of everything there ever was.
i am everything there ever was.
the first spoken word
the groove the toes tap to
the lean and the limp
shimmy and sway
i capture movement and rise in a wave.
i was forgotten by tomorrows,
today i survive in the telling of story
free long before i was enslaved.
yesterday shakespeare mocked the myths of our meaning and wrote it down.
i was the blood shed
the blood shedding
the falling, listen.
listen
still
a river i flow
a river in a rap
listen still a river,
a river in a rap
i flow and reason
the wrong
she sweats
the first time i ran into freedom
she was smoking a cigarette
lounged on the curb
sipping on a sweating beer bottle
mumbling toward the sky
her elbows shivering on her knees
waving me over
i was on my way to change
the world somewhere
i don’t really remember where exactly
i was in a hurry though
and perhaps i wouldn’t have ever stopped
had she not appeared so familiar
her face photographed in my mind
hewing and celestial
i remember her hair
night and twilight
flew down her back
water falling into the air
she was a working woman
woke up every morning at dawn
eavesdropping on the souls of black folk
rushing and dazed
weary and struggling
she noted the children
tumbling and scraped knees
the faces of our mothers
parched and inevitable
the fathers—
freakishly bamboozled
bound in shadows
this is life.
she inhaled an opera of smoke
and exhaled an orchestra of pain
told her i had to be on my way
and she cleverly replied
oh, that’s right. you have to go change the world.
her smile squeezed between her lips
hugging the horizon of her face
i walked off
having caught her smile
freedom’s smile is a contagious spirit
a rattling song of the heart.
daughters of a new day
rousing demonstrations
across the country, globe, and minds
protest is a petition for presence
a dress draping in front of a military tank
it is a black girl scaling a 30-foot pole to take down a confederate flag
the intuitive urgency of doing whatever must be done
tormented by willful silence
courageous voices raise and riot
what cannot be killed
fingers in the shape of a heart, a fistful of blistered blues
we take to the streets, picket signs in our blood, our ancestors
marching through a nightmare, we rise toward freedom
we resist and live as if a right to be
unoccupied, embarrassing borders
state violence is as intimate as a forced kiss, busted lip, or bloodied eye
we feel it in our bones, deeply
how do you matter a life?
the terrain of our struggle to live
our sense of community goes deeper than who we inhabit space with,
it is in the syncing of bodies that never touch
solidarity is a witnessing, the risk, the power to act
it is in the radical fight to care
to nurture what in you endures
the spiritual war of class
the rally for lovers to love
a transwoman dancing with herself in a crowded room for the first time
is too, a protest
a mother in Hebron dresses her daughter in dreams, existence
is too, resistance
a Syrian father reunited with his son on the shore of his arms
is too, a revolution
a frizzed South African girl full of kink and spine, resting her hair in her hands
is too, an act of political warfare
we protest to empower personhood
more than mourning, we roar
be not discouraged, be not dismayed
be defiant and deliberate
always, be.
My mother does not worry about me; she fears me. She fears the power of the life she helped breathe into me. She fears the lessons she taught me will move into action.
She fears I might be willing to die rather than settle for less than the best of loving.
—Cherríe Moraga
acknowledgements
in loving memory of Sandra Prevost: i am a better woman because of your mothering.
i would not be here without my mother Ena Mae Bacquie, who would not be here without my grandmother Graciela Bacquie. thank you for all that you are and all that you endured to carry us. to my sister, Tiffany Wong, i love you. i would not be here without my father Angel Buscamper, who would not be here without my grandmother Hermes.
i want to thank Daphne Kolader and Nelson Caban for their support, encouragement, love, and friendship over the years. y’all are my family. there were many days i called and you answered, many days i knocked and you opened your door. thank you for loving me through some of the darkest nights and brightest mornings. thank you to the village: Hollis Heath, the Heath family, Lauren Justin, Lauren Hill, Chinaka Hodge, Akeema Anthony, Tamara Davidson, the Davidson family, Giselle Buchanan, Saturn Renge, the Williams family, Ferrari Sheppard, Cameron Burkett, Lise Vanderpiete, Gia Abrassart, Elier “El Brujo” Alvarez, Gia Hamilton and Auttie, Arlene Casimir, Viviana Martinez, Emilie Saada, and Susanne Rostock.
to my life mentors and poetry advisors over the years, thank you: Mahogany Browne, Abiodun Oyewole, Saul Williams, Michael Cirelli, Lemon Anderson, Ellison Glenn, Jeffrey McDaniel, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Cynthia Cruz, Ruth Margraff, Calvin Forbes, Craig Harshaw, Vievee Francis, and Gregory Pardlo. thank you, Carrie Mae Weems, for your inspiration, support, and art. thank you to Urban Word NYC. thank you to Brett Bevell and Helema Kadir for all the love y
ou pour into the world, and to Omega Institute for Holistic Studies for giving me space to learn and practice.
a special thanks to Meghann Plunkett and May Alhassen, who spent hours upon hours reading and listening to poems. thank you for believing in me and helping me to communicate my most intimate feelings, thoughts, and ideas.
thank you to Julie Fain and Haymarket Books for supporting this book.
to all my students and mentees over the years: i look forward to what you will do in the world! i’ve learned so much from you all.
to my twin flame, my one true Love (with a big L): umi selah, fka Phillip Agnew, thank you for doing what love does, for supporting me, listening to me, and growing with me. this book would’ve taken another ten years without your encouragement. i learn so much from you. you inspire me.
to all my sisters and brothers in struggle—thank you for fighting and loving beyond.
about haymarket books
Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago.
Our mission is to publish books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice. We strive to make our books a vibrant and organic part of social movements and the education and development of a critical, engaged, international left.
We take inspiration and courage from our namesakes, the Haymarket martyrs, who gave their lives fighting for a better world. Their 1886 struggle for the eight-hour day—which gave us May Day, the international workers’ holiday—reminds workers around the world that ordinary people can organize and struggle for their own liberation. These struggles continue today across the globe—struggles against oppression, exploitation, poverty, and war.
Since our founding in 2001, Haymarket Books has published more than five hundred titles. Radically independent, we seek to drive a wedge into the risk-averse world of corporate book publishing. Our authors include Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Rebecca Solnit, Angela Davis, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, Wallace Shawn, Mike Davis, Winona LaDuke, Ilan Pappé, Richard Wolff, Dave Zirin, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Nick Turse, Dahr Jamail, David Barsamian, Elizabeth Laird, Amira Hass, Mark Steel, Avi Lewis, Naomi Klein, and Neil Davidson. We are also the trade publishers of the acclaimed Historical Materialism Book Series and of Dispatch Books.
also available from haymarket books
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From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
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Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice
Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena Gutiérrez
The Whiskey of our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent
Edited by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff,
introduction by Sonia Sanchez