Category: AP25

Milk

It is in white spaces – the gallery, the museum, the university, the diploma, the page — that I begin to understand myself as an artist.

But it is in the dark that I understand what art is, or might be.

These are also the spaces that I began to understand myself as black.

Often these ideas — of white and dark, of light and black — seem in conflict.

Many of these conflicts seem oppositional or binary but many are unnamed, something else entirely.

In a darkened theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts I listened to the Lebanese artist Walid Raad tell a story where, in summary, a group of artists from the future send him messages of the names of various dead and lost artists.

(I am sorry that I don’t remember it as well as I should — I have decided not to let that stop me any longer.)

Raad first thinks he is crazy, that his mind is falling apart, but he eventually commits himself to writing the names streaming through his head in white vinyl letters on a white wall. Raad said: This is the only way an artist can come to understand things — shows them, and waits for people to tell him what it means.

People come to see this wall. No-one has any answers, except one cranky old journalist who says something like “You asshole, haven’t these people suffered enough? And him of all people.” The critic points at a name. “He does not deserve this!“ The man continues and tells Raad that these are artists of the past long forgotten for all the various reasons that have to do with class and religion and disability all those indexed reasons for why some people get written in and others do not. The critic takes a can of red spray paint and sprays the correct name on the wall, marking it like blood against a unnaturally sterile white surface.

At this moment, the voices cease. Raad knew that these artists from the future had got what they wanted. They made him do this the whole operation, the wall in the gallery, the misspelling so the critic would get angry and so that they could get this red. You see, they had lost the colour red in the future, lost access to it and they wanted it, desperately wanted it again.

I took two things from this story:

It is possible to spend your entire life searching for something that you miss.
That thing can be a color.

&

An artist shows things to others and waits for their responses
This is the only way an artist can come to understand the world.

I am thinking of making a painting and putting in a white space.

A white painting, maybe.

Milk paint is inexpensive and easy to make.

Martha Stewart tells me I will need:

a lemon, a quart skim milk, a sieve, a cheesecloth, dry color pigment or artists’ acrylic paint

She says to

1.     Mix the juice of a lemon with 1 quart of skim milk in a large bowl. Leave the mixture overnight at room temperature to induce curdling.

2.     Pour it through a sieve lined with cheesecloth to separate the solid curds from the liquid whey. Add 4 tablespoons of dry color pigment (available at art-supply stores) to the curd; be sure to wear a mask, and stir until the pigment is evenly dispersed.

I know from experience that this recipe is insufficient.
She has neglected to mention an important chemical — hydrated lime.

But I understand the aesthetic impulse: such simplicity is seductive, aspirational.

To think you could make full bodied-color from milk.

In practice, it produces a thin, sour and sickly whiteness.

milk (noun)                    an opaque white fluid rich in fat and protein, secreted by
                                       female mammals for nourishment of their young

milk (verb)                     extract sap, venom or other substances from

To make a white bath for a cooling head, I was first instructed to use a combination of milks.

This instruction is not private — it came to me by paying for it, from two white women who, I see now, as more than their whiteness. I am no longer angry; but I was.

I told my mother later, angrily, “I should have not to pay for this information!”
She said only  “I did not think I had to tell you such a common thing.” 

You will need:

Coconut milk, goat’s milk, cow’s milk, white flowers (or lucky flowers of any
type), honey, cocoa butter, white soap, cascarilla, Florida water.

Mix this while in bath or shower in a bowl or bucket. Pour over the head.
Scrub self with white soap in a downward direction. Think of what you wish to clear.

After bath, soak skin with cocoa butter.

Take this residue and throw it at the crossroads, behind you.

If this is not possible, down the toilet.

An addition for clarity:

White candle, sharp smelling herbs. Light candle, breathe in.
Imagine a white veil or mist around you. Imagine smell making tear in veil. Continue tearing until reality seeps in. Resist the encroaching white.

If milk is not available, any white powder pasted to the skin and rubbed away will do.     Scrub self with soap.

If you do not wish to through away the residue, put it all behind you, you may
produce your own milk and use it as you wish.

For self-milking:
     retain bath water, particularly concentrate of flowers, milk and cascarilla.

If no bath, retain whatever residue is available.
Press the pulp in your hands.

You may spread veil of confusion or doubt.
You may use to encourage impossible empathy.
You may use to make them see what they say does not exist.

The residue can be used in whatever form is most convenient.

I imagine a choreography:

     Milk rots. It is a horrible smell, says my mother, when it rots.
     Milk is cleaned up immediately. We are forever predicting its spillage.
      “Sit at the table!” “Sit upright.” “Be careful.” 

It could happen at any time.

     A woman is shot and her body remained in the street for observation for days.
     A young man is covered over with police tape and cameras.

     Deaths are notes in the middle of the newspaper, where the tourists will not
     be deterred.

Fill a pool with milk. A pool: a tub. A pool: a hole in the ground, the pit of your stomach.

Bring friends who mourn the people who are now bodies, colors, flesh, smells.

Invite those who do not think they mourn, are simply haunted, see deaths on
a reel or a loop, cannot think to own this grief.

Take this bath together.

It may take a long time, possibly forever. You may never leave this bath.
It will become the world around you, a mist, a veil, although you do not understand
its source.

Scrub each other’s backs. The milk may rot. Dance in this congealed yellowing
mess.

Lie there.

Scrub.

Lay in the sun. Spread your legs with fat.

Take the residue and leave it at the prime minister’s house.

The president.

The mayor. Your neighbor.

The woman who laughed loudly during the film.

The people who seem to be just fine.

Anyone who says there’s nothing to do about it.

Watch them experience this.

The responses may be overwhelming, contradictory, in conflict, painful.

You may grow weary. There’s nothing to do, rings in your head.

Repeat this bath for yourself, in private, alone.

If you didn’t before, now you know what it means to wish for a cool head.

Author Statement

I embrace and trouble ambiguity and the in-between.This piece is part of a longer cross-genre piece – actively questioning the space between artistic disciplines, prose and poetry as well as the spectrum of positions of privilege, power and oppressions. It does not attempt to pinpoint or label, but to explore – with the perversity that it sometimes requires.The piece as a whole includes painting, performance and criticism, all revolving around differential aspects of material culture.

Katherine Agard is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago currently based in California. She travels frequently. Her writing has been supported by Lambda Literary, Kimbilio, Callaloo and VONA/Voices. She is currently an MFA student in Literature at the University the University of California – San Diego where she holds a residence in the Visual Arts Department. She writes and performs her relationship to color – material, socio-cultural, spiritual – and the language which allows us to perceive it.

From “Land of Eroded Womb”

***

what else lies
in this ruin —

i birthed
oscillating
nothingness

from my
second self

who carries
the deluge

& asks
for complete
erasure —

***

on a granite
crucifix

found in
the lawn

of a cremated

cathedral

i etched
her name

with the

knife
i held

where milk
once flowed —

***

enclosed center —

porous drain —

ancient stars
lose their
light

& loss is

pulsion—

choral

chest
buried

under
stones 

& finally

nothing

at all—

***

walking
backward

marshes
starve

under
sanded
tombs —

i wake to

what is this

accidental
aqueduct

valley
ravine —

glass city—

wrought iron

lungs sewn
shut —

***

skin my

sleepless
ghosts

holding
the knife
to my center

who will clean me

& come ripping

the aorta
out & resew

split
roads

of failed
womb

where i lie
prone —

Green Fields

***

in which shape
is my body
hyperrealistic

not knowing
where to look            

how    

excessive

am i
exposed

like this
cathedral’s
plumage         

thickly            
sown.

to walk over              
water  

i must be
absent
from

dimensionality —

parenthetical

harbor —        
birds rustle                       

safely 

in pear trees —

within a series
of buildings

& a single
geography      

there lies

a closure

not meant
to be read

not entirely.

Riverbend

***

from the 9th floor window

we unburdened the room’s

hypoxia

onto barges floating

viscously along

the crescent,

anemic

& sunken

abdominal

land became

Gulf & algae

as we looked to

vast blue

for an answer

to the death

we tried

to medicate

dredging  faith

to prevent further

flooding

what arises

here

white flowers

emerge on stalks

in dead cypress

forests

nothing can be done

lungs effuse

& pogonia trembles

below               screaming

brother

into the phone

& open water,

skyline, lung,

salt water intruding

estuaries & river

reaching wetlands

we drank the

flooding from runoff

said

do not resuscitate

when

i was still holding

her hand

Author Statement

Language fails.

My work has always been interested in failure.

I break open language to process my own losses: that of my home, New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina; that of Louisiana, due to coastal erosion and the failure of the state; that of my mother. My body remembers grief and trauma. My text is a projection of this lacerated body. I subject my work to depression.

I hope to shape language around the void, to map slippages between impulses, to ask the reader to investigate what’s missing. This inclines me to the divine – the inexplicable.

We do not have language for this.

Isabel Balée was born and raised in New Orleans and has roots in Belém do Pará, Brazil. Her work is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Ghost Proposal, and Littletell. You can find her at ibalee.tumblr.com

How to Wage Some Unholy War

If the landlord cuts off the hot water on New Years Day, you can shower at the 24-Hour Fitness on Van Ness early in the morning, depending on who is working the door. Remember: this is the busiest day of the year for gyms across the city, all of which will take extra measures to enhance security. This means the bald security guard will be there, the old guy who works mornings with an omega symbol tattooed on his wrist. Don’t let him intimidate you—he’s just a casual racist. Plenty of patrons heard him call you a high yellow bitch the last time he caught you sneaking in without a membership. The Twitter storm you fueled as a consequence was enough for him to receive a stern warning. Given the he-said-she-said nature of the encounter, the incident wasn’t grounds for termination, but it was enough for management to tell him to look the other way when you sneak in. Yes, you will be evicted if you fail to seek help from the San Francisco Tenant’s Union and cannot come up with this month’s rent—this danger is imminent. But for the present moment, you are the queen of the Twitterverse with a free shower pass. 

            When you finish, walk carefully around the scattering of bodies sleeping inside the service entries of businesses along Van Ness, but don’t count yourself among the homeless yet. Instead, lift a copy of Back to Black when you get to Amoeba Records on Polk Street. Listen carefully: there is only one way to process to track number nine, “Some Unholy War.” Take the advice offered in the song full stop. Go home and lie down on your kitchen floor and replay the track. If the kitchen is too dirty, the bedroom floor will do. Adjust the nobs on the radio until you successfully slow down the tempo—the song should transform into a ballad after a few tries. Close your eyes and press repeat. Play it twice more and memorize the words on the last pass. Resist the urge to obsess over the fact that you haven’t written in months, that you feel extraordinary pressure to produce a manuscript of novel length, to take a job in any field other than writing that pays a decent wage, so that you won’t fear losing your apartment each month. According to the stale fortune cookies you cracked open last night, you will finish writing a book this year. This is your year. Only it doesn’t feel like anyone’s year yet because the early morning hours of New Years Day feel too new to be believed and your jean pockets are so well worn, they are thin as tracing paper. Repeat the mantra to yourself anyway. This is your year.

        The more you listen to the track, the more you think of loving someone as fatuously as the song commands. Reflect on the rhetorical lyric that asks who you write for. Even though you can’t picture a particular person or crowd, don’t let your mind wander. Create a space for the question in your journal and imagine yourself as a person with answers, someone who marches into the Tenant’s Union and reports the landlord for cutting off the utilities, someone who writes and writes and cuts herself over unanswerable questions.

When They Heard About Oscar

They walk nine deep across two city blocks towards the Powell Street Metro Station, a handful of teenage boys. The previous evening, they’d come from Oakland to the Embarcadero and wrestled their way through a large crowd to watch fireworks on the waterfront on New Year’s Eve. Afterward, they’d stayed out all night in the Fillmore, crashing house parties they weren’t invited to, only now making their way home in the early morning hours. They stomp around in puddles, gutter water turning the edges of their jeans a deep indigo. Once they reach the station, they elbow and shove their way to the front of the line on the escalator and take turns hopping the turnstile. The squares—older folks who grow tomatoes and avocados in urban, backyard gardens, and say things to each other like “quite lovely” about wine and food—turn away and clutch their belongings to their chests. The gesture does not go without confrontation. “You scared?” The oldest boy asks a silver-haired man again and again and louder each time until the man cuts his eyes at the group of them, his scowl big enough to carry all of Oakland.

       Out on the platform, the boys split into two groups and howl battle rhymes at each other. The tallest of the group shakes his dark dreads loose from a tattered rubber band and steps into the center of the huddle, his arms extended on either side. He doesn’t want it to get too heated. There are plenty of plain-clothes officers ready to spring out of a quiet corner to slap cuffs on boys like them for less. When their train arrives, they sit and become window percussionists, pounding out beats with their palms and fists.  They stretch their t-shirts over their knees, mindful not to let anyone step on their white sneakers. The cuffs of their jeans dry out on the train, but to be sure, the jeans are cheap—the kind sold three for twenty dollars at the Ashby Street swap meet, the kind that transfers dark blue pigment to their socks, shins, and ankles.

      There are few passengers on the train at this time of morning on a holiday weekend. The boys bore quickly. They rise and stagger single file to the next car as the train begins its passage through the Transbay Tube. The three and a half mile tunnel runs through the bay between San Francisco and Oakland at a depth so low, the boys’ chests tighten involuntarily, and their ears pulse from increased atmospheric pressure. Still, they keep moving and shout out to each other about some girl’s this, and another girl’s that; but mostly, despite the chatter, they speak to each other like strangers. They don’t speak of the night before, their hopes and fears for the New Year. How the soiled fabric on the train seats carries the briny scent of vomit. How some of them will go home, and no one will be there to greet them or worry that they’ve been away all night. How they refer to each other using nicknames because they can’t be sure who is listening. How some of them have been shuffled back and forth between relatives, thrust out of their grandmothers’ apartments when they did not respond to discipline or threats from truancy officers. How these rejections form a slow growing cancerous mound eating at them by degrees each day.

        A small, red-haired woman balances her body against a pole and opens the San Francisco Chronicle. She does not notice two boys standing behind her, quietly reading over her shoulder: “Unarmed Black Man Shot by Police in Subway Station.” The details are scant and contradictory. Some witnesses confirmed the young victim was cooperative with police before the shooting. Others claimed he was a resistant thug rightfully subdued with a knee to the neck. In grainy photographs, the victim lay lifeless on the platform, his thin brown arms handcuffed behind his back. His mother had been tearful, when interviewed—choked up with grief. Investigators released the young victim’s name but were careful to withhold the officer’s. It would be leaked to the press later that day: “Officer Johannes Mehserle Kills Oscar Grant III.”       

         Before the red-haired woman finishes the story, one of the boys, the smallest, whispers to her: “You’re a little far from North Berkeley, aren’t you, snow bunny?” He draws an imaginary line on the floor with his toe. A moment of silence stretches between them. The woman sucks her teeth and holds his gaze for a time. When she opens her mouth to say something, other boys flank her, blocking her path. She closes her mouth and folds the newspaper under a thin, freckled arm. She slides through the semi-circle of boys, a stiff gait all the way to the opposite end of the train car. They do not follow her with their eyes. Instead, they jam fingers inside their ears to relieve the pressure as the train exits the Transbay Tube into Oakland. They say nothing as silver sunlight streams through the windows, into the bay beyond.

Author Statement

I once heard E-40 say something to the effect of “first the Bay Area, then the world.” I can’t find the lie in that sentiment. These somewhat connected stories arose out of a profound love for the Bay, as well as an internal dialogue with a new America I often struggle to understand. When I think of the Sacred Americas, I find myself orbiting New Years’ Day 2009—which, for me, was somewhat of a harbinger of the America we have become. I was living on the edge of Nob Hill in San Francisco at that time, and will never forget waking up to news that a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer “accidentally” shot Oscar Grant. The backdrop to Oscar’s murder was the beginning stages of a tech boom, which materialized from the ashes of the mortgage crisis, wherein unscrupulous loan officers swindled black grandmothers out of their homes in Hunter’s Point. The byproduct of this loss and growth, arguably, was an influx of outsiders and capital that drove up real estate values and inversely affected many communities—most acutely, artists and families of color—who soon found themselves priced out of the city. Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and others followed Oscar.  Rancor and duplicity emerged from our national dialogue around the intersections of race, money, and privilege.  For its part, Oakland grieved and roused resistance. Some say it reclaimed its position as a leader in counter-culture, that it is responsible for the birth of new social activists the world over. How, in many ways, the Bay foretold today’s America.

Esmé-Michelle Watkins is an attorney from Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in BostonReview, Indiana Review, Word Riot, Voices de la Luna and elsewhere. She has worked on the editorial staff at Apogee and Blackberry: A Magazine, and is the recipient of fellowships from the Jacob P. Waletzky Fund, Callaloo, Kimbilio, and Columbia University. You can find more of her writing at www.esmemichelle.com.

HOME IS THE FLOWER OF THE LAND

tierra is the first word
the island teaches us

the wind is our navigator through
this land of the valiant lord

the coasts are crystalline cobalt blue
we give all the hurricanes names

these pueblos of deserts & jungles
opens the roads to the edge of history

we are measured in size & location
harmonize in a minor key

we carry forced exoduses on our backs
our blood is a lineage of caña y café

columns of smoke to obscure
the clarity of this gorgeous sky

seventy eight provinces from bend to bend
from la mar to el oceano, from faro to faro

we erect gigantic billboards of
foreign products, molasses & gasoline

electric poles line the island like sheet music
our technical progress has invaded the countryside

we torture the muscles of these mountains
the small towns are being reconstructed

transformed by irrigation
radio waves & the smart phones

we increased the speed of development
on our  backs & legs

tomorrow seems like a frightening place
of radioactive beaches, plastic forests

bare mineral shells of former glory
hydraulic energy cities & neon mountain sides

this exploding super-population hasn’t
culturally develop the next

we need to defend our island from
the statues that represent an oppressive future

we cannot assure ourselves the air
we breathe will always be free

we cannot assure that these homes of ours
will always belong to us & not a bank of leeches

the geographic position of our land has determined
the course of our history, sovereignty & strategy

we are a forced a collective personality
casualties of imperialism

in between two americas
our lack of volume, our lack of ports

our island that can be seen in two days
tourism is the mirror ball & chain

our reflections bare a narrow house
cramped by the plains, & valleys,

our vision is a trip on the immediate
extension of our landscape

if we stretch our bodies far enough
we can touch the four corners

our history would have been different
if our land was different

our heroes, our fighters who did not fit in,
who fled & died in foreign lands

may have been treated different
because the lack of space needed to create

wouldn’t have been an issue
everyone’s perspectives would’ve been broader

we are geological positioning
we are invigorating climates

we are biological constitutions
we are imperial landscapes

we are trapped in a perpetual cycle of self destruction
operating on our collective psychosis

we were once woods, pastures,
swamps & untapped potential

now a paradise in a schizophrenic conundrum
divided by invisible titles of state & independence

we are jibaros with satellite dishes
we are farmers who carry computers

we are fast food, fast highways,
corporate tools, monopolizing landlords

our hearts sit on the lap of rediscovery
our hands balance the conflict & cooperation

home is the flower of the land
caribbean & atlantic picturesque

our expression is coupled with
our anguish of yearning for freedom

our memories made of lumber, metal,
history, poetry, folklore, & tradition

this land & the century long fight for
the people & our self defining roles

these coasts are crystalline cobalt blue
we give all the hurricanes names

the wind is our navigator through
this land of the valiant lord

libertad is the first word
we taught ourselves

tierra is the first word
the island taught us.

Author Statement

Home Is The Flower Of The Land is an analysis on how post modernization has stunted the growth of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has been a colony of The United States for 119 years & has disconnected the island with the other experiences of the region. To be included in the Sacred Americas Folio connects Puerto Rico with the rest of the Caribbean, Central America, North America & South America in the fight against imperialism, colonialism, racism, gentrification & working towards liberation.

Bonafide Rojas is the author of four collections of poetry: Notes On The Return To The Island (2017), Renovatio (2014), When The City Sleeps(2012) & Pelo Bueno (2004). He appeared on Def Poetry Jam & has been published in numerous anthologies & journals. He’s the bandleader for The Mona Passage, whose debut EP was released in Aug. 2016. He’s performed at various stages: Lincoln Center, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Bowery Ballroom, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Rotterdam Arts Center, Columbia University, NYU, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, BusBoys & Poets & Festival De La Palabra. For more info : www.grandconcoursepress.com.

Ritual Switch

Instead it will be your swift backhand that undoes me
brutal in its bursting
until the raised skin reaches for mercy
tomorrow you will motion
for the chancla when I get a wrong answer
on my math homework
the next day the choir in my flesh will stand,
each pore blooming with blood
when the extension cord meets me
the nerve to meet a god in the eye
as though we are equal
so you break the wooden spoon across my face
and this must be love
yes, because you bring me to the end of myself
again & again
to save me from my foolishness
from the designated bullet   baton   pepper spray   curb stomp
which has promised
its full force upon my skull
you break me with love because
this is your inheritance
A family heirloom
dear god
dear father-god
dear father
if this is love
then pull each plea from me
until I am ruined beyond wanting
until I am a proper disciple

Home

When asked where home is,
I point to a no-nothing night.
A night so black, I could close my eyes
& become that night itself—
empty               expanding, expanding.

                        ***

Every map I point to has no hands that would point back,
doesn’t recognize this body or mouth
the way it reflects two lives.
In one, home is a disappearing landscape.
I call out to the no-nothing & my words turn to gold smoke.

When Momma refused to teach me Yoruba,
she told I should be grateful she was selfish
with her heavy, brilliant tongue,
kept Nigeria & the war & all its music &
schoolyards & dirt roads & men with their greedy hands
in a pantry my small hands could not reach.
To keep me as American as possible. Or safe.
The darkest white girl with a single-barrel mouth,
skinny with a language that was second-handed to me.

In the other, home is a place in memory:

the house on Danville St.
                          grandma’s loose skin
eating fufu with our hands        
                                        James’s Taylor “You Are My Only One”

momma’s garden      sneaking out to kiss boys with busted teeth
                       running through the rose garden

            the wall I punched a hole through

the sound of god falling out of my mother’s hands. 

                           ***

The beautiful struggle of my body against this night,
I have coveted the moon as a heart,
& I think this is home.
A night such as this, I breathe
& my skin begins the faithful labor of unraveling

I.S. Jones is a writer, educator, and hip-hop head hailing from Southern California. She is a fellow with The Watering Hole, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Callaloo. I.S. is very Blk & loud about her joy. In 2016, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been praised by Rachel McKibbens as a “god-lit marvel”. She is the Assistant Editor at Chaparral. Her works have appeared in The Harpoon Review, The Blueshift Journal, SunDog Lit, MatadorReview, Wusgood.black, forthcoming in great weather for MEDIA, the Black Voices Series with Puerto Del Sol, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Hofstra University.

Testimony

They invoke your given name—

                                                                             call on you, a witness,
to take the stand so they can ask what happened as you see it,
all attention settled solely on you as you approach the hot seat
thus creating a deafening silence, locusts in their eye sockets,
a plague set upon your body, your skin crawling, trying to crawl
away from race.
                                   Once seated, you submit to the traditional
procedure: left hand on the bones of God, right hand to the sky.
You take oath, or you send a prayer straight into the salted earth:
same difference. They point their questions like pistols and you
pull answers out of the pockets of your memory; say what you say,
it isn’t gospel to anybody in the room, and even you can’t be sure
you haven’t lied to yourself. Even in saying the Lord has been good
to you, they will press on how good, will insinuate it wasn’t good
enough to stop you from doing what they said you did that night.
But when He sees you through the trial and tribulations like an X-ray
or ultrasound, you’ll be forced to testify all over again, go on about
deliverance despite your doubts:
                                                                            when Pastor asks for a witness,
you’ll give him a witness; you’ll catch the Spirit, take to the choir stand.  

Logos

        As the street-side window decal reads,                    
                Where the Word is the Word 

the Word is bond like mortar is to bricks
        if talking black to black,

                brother to brother, sister to sister
                        and so forth (amen).

        Because boys like me don’t rise
                of their own accord save for

the Savior, I’m raised instead  
        between these oven-like walls,

        anticipated to behave as bread does
                while it’s baking (amen).

        Hands make the metaphor make sense:
how anointing works is by touch

                as is how dough is made
        from scratch, but that’s beside

the point of this place;
        a name isn’t just a name,  

        there’s always a ghost behind it,
an instruction for living (amen).

        In the face of everything we face
                in Chicago, America,

God is the logical response,
        hence the Greek is borrowed from

                for this as with the letters
        of all our frats and sorors.

Bring your sorrows here.
        Bring your skeletons here.

         We’ve crossed bridges of blood
thrice over and now this  

        is what we have to show for it (amen).
                It may be hot as hell in here

some days, but it’s cold as hell
        outside, in those streets:

        cold case (amen) after cold case (amen)
after cold case (amen) though the killed

                and the killers are all known
        and loved above; we all know

                an excess of fire feels like
        being engulfed in ice, what we learned

from all our scrapes and all our bruises
        all over our bodies (amen).

                So, take this book to heart.
        Study it good. And remember,

        when the church says amen,
                say amen (amen).   

Catfish Heaven Variation

I’ve heard it theorized before that heaven has ghettoes, favelas,
        shantytowns and such, and should speculation so happen to be true,
I give praise in advance for I know none of the aforementioned
        to exist without colored peoples to people them homes: havens for
the culture from music to cuisine, all things that cleanse spirits
        like river water.
                                           O Lord, on a good day and a bad, give me all of
my niggas. On a good day and a bad, give us all the fried things
        that send our bodies straight to hell but make the glory shine
even brighter inside us, vessels of the gospel according to grease. Every
        human being comes from a hole in a wall, it’s just that
some of us are better about embracing it—
                                                                                    the food is always going to
        taste better where folks are most thankful for it. It was
said the meek shall inherit the earth, but I say the meek should also inherit
        the meat: batter the bits in powders and spices then let
the oil and the fire do their work.

        Give it up for eloquent hands taking birds beyond abstract
ideas or metaphors, turning them into things we can consume; give it up for
        generous hands that give us fish because we’re hungry and
in need of grace:
                                everyone requires reminder of what and who’s gotten
        them through, who and what they can place their faith in.
Let’s just say I’ve got myself a circle, a divine constellation of personalities
        around me, the ones who pass the hot sauce when I ask
and don’t make me reach for it.
                                                              I can’t figure out most days if love is too big
        a word or too puny, but I know when I die, I want to have
this moment back as many times as I want without worrying over weight or
        blood pressure. People may eat for the body, but they cook
for the soul—
                            so we buy more strips of catfish, we put in another order for
        wings, get lifted in a legend nobody else can ever grasp past
my inability to define miracle without using miracle, my failure to explain
        this isn’t myth because I was there, with them, and couldn’t
shake anyone else’s hand for a week. 

Author Statement

Love in the face of indifference; healing in the face of violence; jubilee in the face of injustice; community in the face of isolation; music in the face of silence; blackness in the face of white supremacy; history in the face of ahistorical interpretation; truth in the face of lies; God in the face of his self-serving children: when the nation I am given gives me nothing to hold dear, to steady my sunniness and hope, I imagine other nations. I make home in sovereign moments where there were no degrees of separation between freedom and myself.   

Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of Telepathologies, selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, his poems have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, River Styx and elsewhere.  

Untitled

God of sweat and mud and rain
God of ashes resurrected
God of angels—feathered, near-naked glimmer
God who casts our souls in fishnet
God of scandal
God of wine
God who gave us bacchanal
God of one-more-day ‘til Lent
God of a love-beaten roadway
God on stilts
God who carries the Spirit in her garment
God’s baptism in a river of revelers
God makes a rolling sea of waists
God among us as woman and man
God of soil
God of High Mas
God of mortal burdens cast on city
God of Amen let it be
God of lost reason & birth
God of a garden in riot
God of ragamuffin
God of royals
God of buxom Dame and blue devil.
God of longtime, of ancient
God of still here.
God of new
but always ours
God of revelation in mask
God of sacrifice and offering
Goddess pose, hips opening
God of omniscience and sky
God of sunlit skin
God of dust that shadows foreheads
God of a fast broken, then entered
God of farewell and beckoning
God of because we can
God of because we must
God of Our Lady and sinners

When I Have Left My Body

In order that every appearance of pantheism, naturalism or nihilism be avoided, it is not permitted to scatter the ashes of the faithful departed in the air, on land, at sea or in some other way, nor may they be preserved in mementos, pieces of jewellery or other objects.
-Holy See declaration

Bury a seed amidst the dust of my bones.
Each artery that branched
along my limbs
will be razed to ash and soil
sprouting a tree.

But first,
make fruit of my flesh
Take my skin to the burned,
my eyes so someone might see.

Why should I not scatter
my ribcage in soot, free my heart?
–A chance to beat again. This is my body
which will be given up for you.
This is what I was shown:
how to abide as branches to The Vine.

I want to go
where there is no need for a church,
no yearning for a collected body.
Can I find new life if I lose myself
in the roots of an unborn seed?
leaves that bear breath to a dying
girl. Give her my lungs.
Give whatever you can;
All I was taught I could be
was dust.

Let my flesh be entombed only
in another’s breaking ribcage.
Let the plant grow.
Let a young woman
unwrap the shrouds of death,
fold them neatly at her bed’s foot.
Let doctors witness her open her eyes, awaken
out of her anesthesia valley, proclaiming,
softly,
she is risen. 

Author Statement

Both of these poems stem from the Roman Catholic influence in my native Trinidad. Being raised Catholic, there are so many rules around what we can do with our bodies, even when we die. I find myself trying to exert autonomy but being afraid to offend the Church by doing anything “too pagan.” That is where “When I have left my body” comes from. “God of sweat and mud and rain” examines the many cultures of Trinidad that are present in Carnival. Slaves making the festival their own, bringing African influences into the mix, I think was a kind of quiet resistance enacted against the French slave masters who brought Carnival to Trinidad. It also reminds us that Carnival—like Easter and the Winter Solstice—was originally a pagan ritual before the Church repurposed it.

Daria-Ann Martineau was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. After earning a BA in Speech and Hearing Science from The George Washington University (DC), she saw there were more interesting ways to understand language. She now holds an MFA in Poetry writing from New York University, where she was a Goldwater Hospital fellow. She is an alumna of the Saltonstall Arts Colony and the Callaloo Creative Writers Workshop, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her poetry has appeared in Narrative, KinfolksQuarterly, and The Collagist, among others. 

Airplane Mode

He chose the wrong people
                                                 to make God*

a secret-                      -smoking a cigarette
followed me all day-                   to remind

I m lactose intolerant-                   so often
do I forget                                that we left

to fight               for the right to have it all
for the right to ask-     -before lines crosst

where does the world end-                 -and
where was your temple                    begun

and ask again    where does the world end
and                               -your temple begin

and again-            -why did the world end
when                           -your temple began

and ask again-            -why end the world
where-                        -your temple begins
and again-

*Kamau Brathwaite on Caliban

sunclade and fallen

you re sick I think    -then start to get hard
the whites                  -on the stovetop fire

of your eyes                bloodshot and puffy
from nights fallen asleep-    with the glow

melanopic yellow-                   -of an apple
product on your face-      -so you ve come

to expect that light-     -from who so nears
in the same but other quiet       your sleep

elsewhere-                       around the world
people                      -shoulder to shoulder

are shouting get-                      -your hand
out of my pocket and-         -farther down

you alone prosper          -in the possibility
in the fruit of your fantasy            holding

closer                                     to your chest
the thumbelina doll              -your mother

wanted but never held                         -for
more than                                   a moment

clutching herself      -like a shadow presst
to the wall                             praying for it

not to be taken-              -until she s taken
no longer                       -by the possibility                      

that              -now and everyday hereafter

you re an accident-     -leaning half asleep
on every emergency exit  and every night

light                                   feels to you like
                                the holy roman empire

Author Statement

Funny how one’s being in the Sunken Place has entered the lexicon following Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). These poems were written well before the platonic arrivant of the film’s now famous phrase. In fact, the italicized language is borrowed from the great poet of The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. He chose the wrong people to make God, is how Kamau Brathwaite described Shakespeare’s Caliban in his 1982 lectures at the Centre for Commonwealth Literature and Research in Mysore, India: “…what happened to Caliban in The Tempest was that his alliances were laughable, his alliances were fatal, his alliances were ridiculous. He chose the wrong people to make God…“

Clearly Caliban was in the Sunken Place, conditioned to fear a kind of false magic (not the magic of his mother, Sycorax). He chose the wrong people to make God. It’s a line that haunts me. Brathwaite is asking me to consider the ways in which I’m complicit with my oppressor, asking me to consider how I’ve allowed myself to become captive. Sometimes you need to put the whole shit on hold, put the whole world in airplane mode. Get free.

Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn. He is assistant professor of literary arts at Brown University and editor-in-chief of the Broome Street Review. www.iDoNotMove.com