What does it mean to be embodied? Are our bodies descriptions, reflections of a larger reality, a smaller reality? A bridge in scale? Are our bodies a mandate, a command, demanding something of earth, of this moment? Most days my body feels like an ancestral airport, arriving and departing, tension and possibility. Unpredictable delays and chance encounters. Today on Toni Cade Bambara’s birthday, I want to share with you a poem written by the participants in last month’s M/otherlands Intensive. We were responding to Audre Lorde’s poem “Call” where she says “my whole life has been an altar/worth its ending,” and calls the name of every goddess, ancestor and warrior elder she can name in the space of the poem.
This Sunday I am thinking about what it really means to breathe in accountability to named and unnamed ancestors. Temporary and in time. The epiphany of this flesh. As usual this poem is a ceremony aloud (during our intensive the lines of this poem were brought to life by our collective recitation and improvised singing by Mankwe Ndosi and drumming by Iyatunde Folayan. See if you can hear us when you speak it aloud. Open for who else is there.
(Speaking of open…there are a couple of spots open for next weekend’s Legacy Intensive: Daughtering in the Face of Death…sign up ends today.)
Flesh my Epiphany (Answering the Call)
by the participants in the M/otherlands Intensive
“I have written your names on my cheekbones
dreamed your eyes flesh my epiphany”
-Audre Lorde “Call”
wind my poetry
water my ecstasy
insight my hunger
sky my ocean
ocean my calling
clouds my companions
stars my wolfpack
stars my children
mississippi my blood
whales my pulse
Lorde my light
Cohen my medicine bag
wizard my existence
wounds my entrypoints
wounds my portals
scars my adornment
land my longing
monsoon my tears
freedom my longing
fear my wings
land my teacher
plants my teachers
moon my teacher
auroras my ancestors
ancestors my university
unbelonging my knowings
truth my roots
disruption my roots
tend my growth
clock my jailer
rage my bed
expectations my murder
worry my addiction
desire my energy
friends my security
resistance my privilege
footstep my accountability
release my rest
repetition my process
resistance my teacher
failure my muscle
danger my complicity
hollow my fear
silence my fear
language my lifeboat
writing my balm
conjuring my sanity
red wine my ceremony
finger my food
tongue my judgement
exile my enemy
eat my enemies
run my life
waste my money
release my trauma
evaporate my rage
remove my chains
learn my forgiveness
unburden my flesh
undress my nakedness
cherish my writing
seize my legacy
sex my body
move my stillness
still my movement
journey my treasure
water my salvation
smudge my doubt
palo santo my transportation
Ifa my remembering
dreams my prophecy
love my imperative
this moment my healing
love my name
breath my spirit
breath my home
home my heartbeat
spiral my timeline
spiral my channel
song my conversation
satisfaction my present
dancing my medicine
connection my altar
ritual my relationship(s)
relationship my compass
kiss my babies
plant my seeds
dig my dirt
daughter my shovel
loss my sister
sister my blood
sister my ceremony
mother my mystery
mother my compass
mother my self
melanin my magic
magic my inheritance
honey my oracle
savor my truth