“Frontispiece Remastered” Collage by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Last night after laying our bodies in the street in protest, while advocating and praying for our comrades who had been arrested, while grieving and grieving the loss of black lives, the audacity of state violence, while remembering the police murder of Fred Hampton and honoring the resilience of our beautiful communities, 5 black women gathered in the name of Phillis Wheatley. 230 years ago today Phillis Wheatley/Peters the first Black person to publish a collection of poems in the United States, witness to the American Revolution, acquaintance of a Queen and a President, died free, cold and poor somewhere in Boston.
Our conversation, blessed by the literary and historical expertise of Dr. Tara Bynum, ranged from the possibility of “ordinary” Black life in a context where just being a live and Black is framed as not just extraordinary but abnormal, to speculations of the layered and syncretic spiritual cosmologies present in Wheatley’s work and her correspondence with her friend Obour Tanner, to Morissonian (as in Toni) reflections on the normalcy of evil, to raw honesty about slave-funded academic institutions that continue to enslave black scholars, to just wondering where our friends are and if they are okay.
Inspired by Wheatley’s invocation of the sacred nine in her poetry, we mused a while and generated resources of laughter, love, epic realness, star-knowledge, movement, history, tragedy, song and hymns to share with each other as a reminder that the institutions that harm us are not our only sources of power, we are resources for each other. Finally we created this poem together out of our outrage at this moment and our faith that our lives and our world can be different. This is a prophecy poem offering on the date of Phillis Wheatley’s ascension. May all of our ancestors receive it and join us in transforming life on earth.
Prophecy Poem (impermanence after Phillis)
by the participants in Bright Black Broadcast #3: Phillis Wheatley
black bodies disappearing into death, state-sanctioned choke-holds.
it will not always be this way
the impossibility of breathing.
it will not always be this way.
I listen to my ancestors when they say
it will not always be this way
to steady my steps I have to pray
it will not always be this way
it cannot always be this way
it will not always be this way
it will not always be this way,
i will continue to say
it will not always be this way,
as I smile remembering what’s gone is for yesterday
liberation is possible – perhaps not today.
it will not always be this way
hasten the change, no more lives should pay.
it will not always be this way.
y’all must got me f—d up
it will not always be this way
you must not know who taught me to pray
it will not always be this way
trickster teacher chaos clay
it will not always be this way
i’m gonna be here anyway
it will not always be this way
it will not always be this way
there is more than one way
gather the children and tell them
it will not always be this way
remind each other that
it will not always be this way
name your babies
it will not always be this way
the ancestors promise
it will not always be this way
baptize in the name of
it will not always be this way
we make joy
because it will not always be this way
i was born to love and play
It will not always be this way
we will dance into the black light of a brand new day,
it will not always be this way
#itwillnotalwaysbethisway
If you want your own limited edition print of the “Frontispiece Remastered” collage of Phillis Wheatley you can get on with your next $35 donation to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind. Be sure to include “Wheatley Print” and your current address with your donation: 