This weekend’s Last is a Verb: Archiving After the End of the World Intensive was MIRACULOUS. Seven star-seeking, memory-keeping geniuses activated ancestral love, brave knowing and revolutionary vulnerability towards clarity and action about the world we want to keep, the systemic and internal patterns we want to destroy and the possibilities implied by the archive of our being.  Does that sound deep? It was.  We dug deep and emerged dirty and resplendent, like the planet.

On our first day together we engaged Audre Lorde’s theories of survival, Octavia Butler’s examination of Ooloi as an archivist gender for remembering and recreating life in infinite contexts, offered each other the archives held and lost by our own names and our relationships to our names, and the knowing held and kept in our physical bodies.  And that was just the first day.   I will be sharing blog posts for the res of the week about what else we did, but for now, we want to offer a poem we created by thinking about what knowledges and longings we have archived so deeply in our bodies, minds and hearts that we could create whole worlds out of them, in the tradition of the Oankali Ooloi.

If you want to be sure to know about upcoming intensives, webinars and workshops add your email to the Brilliance Remastered Brain Trust list here: http://eepurl.com/bsb6rj

 

Possible Worlds: (From the Archives of Our Being)

 

By the Last is a Verb: Archiving After the End of the World Participants

 

I could build a world of running away.

I could build a world of talking back.

I could build a world made from the joy found in my great grandmother’s smile.

I could build a world of my grandmother’s laughter. Her idioms. Her broken French.

I could build a world of that look mama gives sometimes.

I could build a world of great grandma’s teacakes and yardbird for dinner.

I could build a world of women waking early to bake bread.

I could build a world of answered letters and congratulatory cards.

I could build a world of Black feminists asking about each other’s daughters.

I could build a world of books and time to read them.

I could build a world of love.

I could build a world of yes.

I could build a world of mutual acceptance.

I could build a world of bad typing and supernatural syntax.

I could build a world of painless hands.

I could build a world of middle-aged flabby acceptance.

I could build a world of sacred drumming as the background rhythm to everything.

I could build a world of gifts my brother picked up off the ground.

I could build a world of everyone sleeping peacefully always.

I could build a world of dreams from rocks kept under pillows.

I could build a world of love singing first thing in the morning.

I could build a world of weightless floating.

I could build a world of flower filled baths.

I could build a world of tears cried at graduations.

I could build a world of self-possessed strutting in the best way.

I could build a world of the presence of horses, everywhere.

I could build a world of desire remaking escape.

I could build a world of prayers heard and questions celebrated.

I could build a world of listening as medicine.

I could build a world of healing breaths.

I could build a world of laughing out loud, often.

I could build a world of cherished surprise.

I could build a world of pleasure made of honey and cinnamon.

I could make a world of black feminist poetics.

I could build a world of worlds burnt down.

I could build a world of worlds remade.

 

 

I could build a world without borders.

I could build a world where words come easy.

I could build a world where black joy flows in abundance.

I could build a world where the cure for jealousy is adoration.

I could build a world where a powerful woman is valued and never feared.

I could build a world where Black women believe they are enough.

I could build a world where mothers can find time to rest.

I could build a world where shame doesn’t exist.

I could build a world where Love is Love is Love is.

I could build a world where double chins are fine.

I could build a world where no one is surprised when young people shine.

I could build a world where you do not have to have money to live well.

I could build a world where playing is everyone’s job, sometimes.

I could build a world where there is enough clean water for everyone.

I could build a world where we breathe saltwater so no one drowns and no one is alone.

I could build a world where greed is dissolved.

I could build a world where housing is for people, not for profit.

I could build a world where everyone knows where home is.

I could build a world where everyone’s story is heard.

I could build a world where people regularly share about our conversations with the land.

I could build a world where everyone knows cooperation and love are the true qualities of humanness.

I could build a world where there are no prisons.

I could build a world where ‘divide and conquer’ is impossible.

I could build a world where art is not extra.

I could build a world where darkness is not the metaphor for everything evil.

I could build a world where healing with sound and color is an everyday occurrence.

*******

Last night called and called and called on the oracle of the Lorde.  We lifted up the name Korryn Gaines.  We remembered how long we’ve been sayinghername.  We affirmed the power of our communities and reclaimed our bodies from the state.  We investigated our own practices and positions of power.  We shared our fears, insights and dreams.  We remembered that the difference is being ready.  Being present.  Being here.  Together.

If you are looking for more opportunities to get and stay ready, join us next Friday for Maybe: Afro-Pessimism and Revolutionary Mothering or the following week for our next intensive Last is a Verb: Archiving After the End of the World.

Here are the poems we created. With love.

Reclaiming Power (in honor of our communities of accountability)

by the participants in “The Difference Between Poetry and Rhetoric: Responding to Police Violence”

 

I believe in the power of black mothers

I believe in the power of black women historians

I believe in the power of immigrant women

I believe in the power of black girls

I believe in the power of our bodies

I believe in the power of incarcerated youth

I believe in the power of black femmes

I believe in the power of South asian & brown femmes

I believe in the power of poetry

I believe in the power of our political prisoners

I believe in the power of the water of the world

I believe in the power of griots

I believe in the power of afro-xicanxas and afro latinxs

I believe in the power of collective Black Girl Magic

I believe in the power of real, authentic solidarity

I believe in the power of radical, collective healing

I believe in the power of the people of Durham, NC

I believe in the power of women of color mothers

I believe in the power of queer people of color

I believe in the power of those at the bottom of the ocean

I believe in the power of those who speak our mother tongues

I believe in the power of our ancestral and spirit guides

I believe in the power of libraries

I believe in the power of collaboration

I believe in the power of curiosity

I believe in the power of sisterhood

I believe in the power of those people and places that helped raise me up

I believe in the power of my Philly Community!

I believe in the power of my nieces

I believe in the power of poor people

I believe in the power of “rioutous cities” like Baltimore

I believe in the power of black beauticians

I believe in the power of our cultural currency

I believe in the power of my homegirls

I believe in the power of my faith family

I believe in the power of the people of south side of chicago and troy, alabama

I believe in the power of my son’s liberation.

I believe in the power of galaxies and outer space

 

Between

by the participants in “The Difference Between Poetry and Rhetoric”

 

“the difference

between poetry and rhetoric

is being ready

to kill

yourself

instead of your children.”

-Audre Lorde in “Power”

 

“been

black

black

been

but

between”

– from the “b” oracle in the Lorde Concordance of “Power”

between black and black

between living and surviving

between ancestors and dreams

between proximity and possibility

between a comma and a period

between reclaimed freedom and self-imposed prison

between sanity and survival

between theory and practice

between me and us

between ice creamed surprises and “good cops”

between my body and his story about my body

between resistance and existence

between been and fitting’ to

between the lesser of two evils and choosing no choice at all

between our lived reality and the fairy tale

between childhood and tallness

between not another and never again

between my faith in myself and the glory of acting on faith

between Black mothers and Black children

between safety and trust

between compassion and implication

between justice and Black Girl Magic

between us and ourselves

between power and foresight

between i and i

between hatred and collaboration

between yes and yesterday

between love and privilege

between hardness and the journey to softness

between ancestral and elderly wisdom

and the leadership of our emerging freedom fighters

between the healing power of plants and the healing power of your hands

between love and the capacity for more love

between the veil and it’s being pulled back

between gone but not forgotten

 

“In a very real sense, every writing as revision makes the discovery all over again.” – Hortense Spillers in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: A New American Grammar Book” -1987

“Your mama is queer as hell.”- Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines -2016

It’s been almost 30 years since Hortense Spillers offered a radical inquiry into “the condition of the mother” in her 1987 essay, and 354 years since “the condition of the mother” became the legal definition of enslaved status in the United States. The murder of Korryn Gaines two days ago and the shooting of the child she held in her arms comment equally clearly on the “condition” of black mothers in relationship to the state.

Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines draws on definitions of mothering from Hortense Spillers, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, June Jordan and Alice Walker in an attempt to use the same rupture in the meaning of “mother” that made slavery possible to reveal a queer potential in the ongoing gender-transcending criminalized work of affirming, causing, keeping, nurturing and protecting black life.

This seminar is for thinkers who want to work deeply with the implications and possibilities of mothering in this moment in the context of the intervention Spillers made (and is still making.)  We will use close reading and poetic engagement with Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe, discussion, collective writing and other forms of community accountable critical engagement to deepen our praxis and revolutionize our mothering.

Or in other words…

“This space, which is a temporary space, which we must leave, for the sake of future travelers and our own necks, is a sacred dedicated space. Libation for the named and the nameless.  This is for black women who made and broke narrative.  The quiet, the quarrelling, the queer.  This is where.  This is what. This is how.” – Alexis Pauline Gumbs in the opening note to Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity

 

FAQs

Who can participate in this seminar?

Anyone who is thinking about/living blackness, anti-blackness, mothering and the state and who is willing to read the essay by Spillers and an excerpt of Revolutionary Mothering in advance, and who can respect the accountable facilitation of a black feminist love evangelist.

Will you write me a letter of invitation so I can get reimbursed by my school or workplace?

Of course.  (I call it DIY reparations.) Just tell me what you need.

What if I sign up and then change my mind or my plans change?

The registration fee is non-refundable.  If you don’t show up your fee will be a donation to the ongoing work of Brilliance Remastered (alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered) and Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (blackfeministmind.wordpress.com).  So you can’t lose.

 

Last is a Verb: Archiving After the End of the World September 9-11, 2016  2pm to 5pm Eastern

For some of us it feels like the world is about to end.  Some of us have seen the world end over and over again for our communities, and yet we feel the impulse to document, to keep, to share or as the every day archivists at Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths say to “know and remember.”   We are post-colonial obeah, black post-katrina, black feminist after 1981, radical followers of Phillis Wheatley, still following Benjamin Banneker’s almanac. We are accountable to something that shouldn’t exist.  But it does.  It still does.

This is a course for archivists in the broadest sense of the term who want to think together about what is worth saving, or how WE are worth saving in this moment.

This is a space for community archivists, academic archivists, experiential archivists, DJs, researchers, community organizers, media makers, mapmakers, curators, geneaologists, documentary artists, historians, writers, family recipe recipients, collectors, oral history-makers, filmmakers, family reunion planners, Nina Simone fans and any one who feels called to think about what it means to keep material, digital, mental or embodied records at/after this time.  What lasts at last?

Our black feminist references for apocalypse will include Octavia Butler, Jacqui Alexander, Audre Lorde, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Hortense Spillers, Alice Walker, June Jordan, Nina Simone, Janelle Monae, Phillis Wheatley and more.

Registration is limited, hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $175-300.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by September 5th.

“The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready…”  -Audre Lorde in “Power”

Thursday August 4th 6pm-9pm EDT. Online. 

We have recently heard quite a lot of rhetoric, during an election cycle where (thanks to intentional organizing and horrific acts of harm caught on video) police violence cannot be ignored.   And we have continued to see the judicial system offer anything but justice.  Due to repeated requests, we are offering another one night webinar on how writers, scholars and artists can respond to police violence in this moment.

This online course is for those of us who are scholars, writers and artists who are figuring out our role in a moment characterized by (a need for) drastic change. This one night workshop draws specifically on ways that Audre Lorde and June Jordan responded to police violence as poets, university teachers and public intellectuals. We need the depth of their legacy right now as much as we ever have.

The class will draw on Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s chapter “Nobody Mean More: Black Feminist Pedagogy and Solidarity” in the book The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent (eds. Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira.)

As she says in the chapter itself “This chapter is a meditation on what it means to be nobody in a university economy designed to produce somebody inviduated, assimilated and consenting to empire. Is it possible to instead become nobody in the academic space? Is it possible to align with the illegible oppressed/contemporary subaltern, the falling apart abject nonsubject, inside a university English class?” (Participants in the course will get a pdf of the full chapter to refer to for the class.)

If you, like Audre Lorde and June Jordan, are a writer or teacher or a theorist or a thinker or an activist or a mother or all of these things at the same time, join us for a supportive space where we tap into the the power of black feminist legacy and empower each other (the nobodies that we are) to face this moment. 

Get your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-difference-between-poetry-and-rhetoric-responding-to-police-violence-tickets-26877479264

 

FAQs

If I did NOT participate in “Nobody Mean More: Responding to Police Violence” a few weeks ago, can I still take this course?

Yes.  In fact, part of the reason this course is happening is to accommodate people who wanted to participate in the first course and could not.

If I DID participate in “Nobody Mean More: Responding to Police Violence” a few weeks ago, can I still take this course?

Yes. Although we will be drawing on the same ancestors (Audre Lorde and June Jordan) and the same texts, we will be doing different activities.  If you participated in the first class and want to stay engaged in this conversation feel free to join us again.

Do I need to do a lot of reading to be ready for the course?

No.  When you register you will get access to all of the texts mentioned, but these are for your continued exploration and you are not required to read them ahead of time.

Why are there a limited number of tickets for an online event?

The online platform that Brilliance Remastered uses for courses enables 50 live users at a time.  So there are only 50 tickets for this event.  There are also a limited number of free and choose your own donation tickets…which usually go first.  If you want to be the first to know about Brilliance Remastered courses

If I change my plans, can I get a refund?

There are no refunds because there are a limited number of spots.  If your plans change your offering will be considered a donation to this ongoing work.  If you email to let us know, we may offer your spot to someone on the waiting list.

 

This week as everyone was reminded again of the urgency of our political, creative and intellectual work at this time, a group of us went underwater to hear the voices of our ancestors whose warnings, wisdom and ways are seeking to guide us in this moment.  Water holds sound and the love of our ancestors holds us as we make braver and braver decisions.  The Breathe Underwater: Baptismal Intensive was a sacred space of remembering and renewal.  We brought our ancestors into the space, embodied each other’s ancestors, dove deep into the ancestrally co-written works of M. Nourbese Philip, M. Jacqui Alexander and June Jordan, broke our contracts with slavery and internalized capitalism, cleansed ourselves with divine memory, listened to whales, coordinated our breathing, let words wash over us and laughed and raged and rose up renewed.

Below we are offering some poems that we created.  We were inspired by Kitsimba’s commitment (voiced across generations in Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing) that “all life is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean” to create an invocation that articulates our connection AND we each wrote poems inspired by June Jordan’s Who Look at Me to prepositionally describe our ancestral relations.  Take a deep breathe and let these words hold you, like how water holds sound, like how our movement holds contradiction, like how our ancestors hold us and we hold each other.

P.S. If you want to learn about future online intensive or in-person Brilliance Remastered gatherings join the email list or the facebook group.  Registration is also open right now for the Nobody Mean More to Me retreat in Durham on September 9-11.

all

an invocation for and by the participants in the breathe underwater: baptismal intensive

(we recommend starting with three deep breaths and ending with seven)

“all life is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean.”

-Kitsimba in Pedagogies of Crossing by M. Jacqui Alexander

 

all light is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all love is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all memory is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all prayer is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all discernment is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all clarity is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all passion is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all singing is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all dance is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all freedom is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all resistance is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all abundance is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all playfulness is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all silliness is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all joy is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all power is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all sacred ritual is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all gratitude is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all compassion is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all forgiveness is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all rage is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all wonder is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all hope is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all transformation is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all wisdom is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all grace is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all elevation is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all rest is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all connection is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all breathing is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all dreaming is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all spirit is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all blessings to overcome are shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

all that was, is and shall be is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

all of who we are is shared with those at the bottom of the ocean

 

Beyond and Across

by Njeri Damali Campbell

Who look at me?
Who speak to me?
Who laugh at me?
Who fight with me?
Right beside me?
Who stand above me?
Who rage with me?
Who cries on me?
Who move through me?
Who come for me?
Who be with me?
Who womanifest as me?
Who want for me?
Who travel across me?
Who remember for me?
Who remember as me?
Who exists in me?
Who persists as me?
Who endures despite me?
Who loves between me?
Who knows through me?
Who knows as me?
Who cannot without me?
Who wait beyond me?
Who speak through me?

*

by Beth Bruch

Who laugh with me

Who sustain with me

Who walk with me

Who dream through me

Who dream of me

Who remember in me

Who move through me

Who live in me

Who return to me

Who love through me

Who exist around me

Who work with me

Who sing through me

Who speak in me

Who dance around me

Who whisper to me

Who remember for me

Who create for me

Who run around me

Who receive from me

Who give to me

Who remind to me

Who help with me

Who challenge against me

Who slip from me

Who return to me

Who return to me

Who return to me

Who play with me

Who love in me

Who burn in me

Who yearn for me

Who are of me

*

by Natalie Clark

Who dreamed me into dreaming
Who held me in DNA
Who witness me now
Who unfold me yesterday
Who swims me
Who is me tomorrow
Who is me yesterday
Future ancestor.
My daughter
Who my daughter me…

*

by Sheena Sood

Who hold onto me?

*

by Laura Sullivan

 

 

who lives within me

by ife kilmanjaro

 

who breathe with me

by alexis pauline gumbs

who breathe with me

who sing as me

who dance through me

who kiss upon me

who laugh around me

who bless over me

who love in me

who guide beside me

who open up between me

who designate exactly me

who fly through me

who hope inside me

who whisper into me

who rise under me

who radiate across me

who smile surrounding me

who protect by me

who teach above me

who love all of me

Last night a hopeful, anxious, heavy, urgent, connected, inspired group of artists, writers, scholars and teachers gathered to collectively tap into the legacy of June Jordan and Audre Lorde as we respond to police violence in this moment.

We called in our folks, lifted up our communities of accountabilities, honored our feelings, learned about the specific ways that June Jordan and Audre Lorde were impacted by and worked to respond to police violence, looked at the complex ways we are connected to police violence and our communities of accountability, recommitted to and recontextualized our daily creative praxis, activated the Lorde Concordance Oracle, held each other in process, shared our fears, hopes and lessons and created poetry together.

We chose the letter b (for brave for #blacklivesmatter for the bold act of listening our intuition) and we were blessed and broken open by the Lorde Concordance offering from the poem “Power” that spoke so directly to our process in the moment.   We reached for ways to ground our actions and decision making in legacy, ancestral guidance and profound purpose instead of reaction, scarcity, ego and panic.  The poems below are in the tradition of June Jordan’s “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” and her “Poem About Police Violence.”  We place them here in honor of the communities we love and towards the world we deserve.

P.S. If you are interested in going deeper into this process of drawing on ancestral depth for this time of urgent change check out our upcoming 3-day intensive Breathe Underwater: A Baptismal Intensive for Ancestor Accountable Artists, Activists and Intellectuals.   And if you are interested in applying the wisdom of June Jordan and Audre Lorde to your work of solidarity against police violence, in support of transnational liberation movements, as and with precarious intellectual workers in the adjunct movement, as students and faculty of color confronting anti-blackness in the Ivory Tower consider coming to the in-person Brilliance Remastered Retreat Nobody Mean More in Durham, NC this September.

Nobody Mean More to Us

a roll call poem by the participants in Nobody Mean More

 

Nobody mean more to me than black & brown folks, black queer folks, haitian folks, young folks.

Nobody mean more to me than Black mothers

Nobody mean more to me than elders and ancestors

Nobody mean more to me than brilliant black women

who refuse to give up or go unheard

Nobody mean more to me than black mothers and babies

birthing and living free

Nobody mean more to me than queer youth of color

breaking through to love

Nobody mean more to me than sick disabled injured queer trans brown black broke and healing friends

Nobody mean more to me than black elders

Nobody mean more to me than my invisibly disabled community

Nobody mean more to me than black and brown folks

not only surviving but thriving

Nobody mean more to me than crip queer poc

sick and surviving still

Nobody mean more to me than babies

bringing light and blackness

Nobody mean more to me than all of the students of color at our school

and all of their communities and loves

Nobody mean more to me than students

who refuse to belong

Nobody mean more to me than anyone

willing to learn

Nobody mean more to me than poor folks

hustling daily

Nobody mean more to me than crip brown & black youth

teaching us

Nobody mean more to me than young people

who bring energy and passion to their despair and confusion

Nobody mean more to me than all people of color

excluded from home yet still resist

Nobody mean more to me than Black diasporic GNC Queers

coming up from nothing and claiming a right to their ancestors and culture

Nobody mean more to me than Black disabled femme folks

who can’t get out of bed sometimes

Nobody mean more to me than God

the orisha, ancestors and the lukumi community

Nobody mean more to me than us

Black and Brown folks

who hold us close and set us straight

and remember us on the days and nights we might forget us

 

every time

by the participants in Nobody Mean More: Artists, Intellectuals, Educators Responding to Police Violence

“Tell me something

what you think would happen if

everytime they kill a black boy

then will kill a cop

everytime they kill a black man

then we kill a cop

 

you think the accident rate would lower

subsequently?”

-June Jordan, “Poem about Police Violence”

 

 

 

what if every time was the last

 

what if every time

we killed the part of us that did this

 

what if every time

the dead returned to reckon with us

 

what if every time

we outsmarted our fear

 

what if every time

every one else had to hold and feel the pain of the mother for one day

 

what if every time

we were believed

 

what if every time

whiteness choked on its own violence

 

what if every time

the sun went out

 

what if every time

the water turned to blood

and we couldn’t drink one drop without tasting it

 

what if every time

all of the tears shed were collected in a vessel

and transformed into the power to dismantle institutions

 

what if everytime had already happened

and this was a question for historians

 

what if every time

we rush the road with 10,000 beating hearts

running perpendicular to the Mississippi

 

what if every time

videos of black bodies being murdered

were not played on a loop

 

what if every time

the TRUTH was broadcast far and wide

and false media messages were laughed at and discarded

 

what if every time

we dislodged the cold stone in our throat so we could speak

 

what if every time we loved each other more

 

what if every time

we admitted how hopeless we actually are

 

what if every time

we chose to continue to have hope in spaces of collectivity

 

what if every time

we knew there would be justice.

 

what if every time

we were allowed to grieve without any shame

 

what if every time I asked for one day when I do not have to think about being Black

but just being human

I got a day

 

what if every time

we had a national day of mourning

 

what if everytime police sacrificed black life

white people just went out and sat all over every police car in the whole country so they couldn’t drive out get out of the car for a day a week

 

what if every time

the “good” police officers

stood up en masse denouncing their colleagues

 

what if every time the police murder someone

a week’s pay of every police employee is withheld

 

what if every time

a politician chosen at random lost their position

 

what if every time a black body is shattered

a thousand more were loved into existence

bathed in joy, shown the power of our own wings

 

what if every time

we were allowed to feel Black Joy

 

what if every time

we could feel free to stop proving our right to exist

and get to the business of feeling the joy our existence

 

what if every time

we intentionally breathed into our bellies

 

what if every time we were afraid

we danced

 

what if every time

we allowed ourselves the space to cry outside

 

what if everytime

we put a bowl of water under the bed and ask our ancestors to dream us a way

 

what if every time

we were raptured away to a new dimension

to start again

 

what if every time

no one had electricity

and our news was our talk between stoops

 

what if every time

we read all day aloud while standing on corners

 

what if every time

we lost the language

and had to make a new one from scratch

 

what if every time

we would communicate without words

but make sounds from deep down

 

what if every time they kill black folk

everyone lays down in a grave

everyone

and rises up with dirt to do

 

what if every time

we planted a garden

 

what if every time we must create hashtags

we open the borders for ten days and allow 1000 refugees places to stay

 

what if every time

we gave a scholarship to a student of color

 

what if every time

we put a love poem into the pocket of every black child we know

 

what if every time

we made space to be gentle to each other

 

what if every time

we stole our days back

 

what if every time

we took a broomstick to the stained glass

 

what if every time

we centered in our dignity

 

what if every time

we allowed ourselves to be

 

what if every time

we remember how resilient we are

 

what if every time

we dreamed

we created new worlds with new possibilities

 

what if every time we hurt

we gain direct access to healing ancestors

with remedies to soothe our pain

 

what if this time

police were disarmed

and trained as midwives and doulas

 

and the midwives and doulas

became the keepers of safety

 

you think the “accident” rate would lower

subsequently?