Sunlight (Gratitude Poem #2)

Sunlight

For Linda Thurston, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the hunger striking prisoners in California who included in their demands...sunlight.

After Audre Lorde’s “Production”

Sweet leaks out the droning walls

call it hard-knocks monastery

call it Ghandi split and shackled

call it honey in a bitter built hive

Call it hunger

low voiced and steady

call it straining the flow

sweet don’t stop in the brackish brace of bars

sting our stumbling

our slowness our sloth

sting our floral forgetting

honey breathe deep

something is blooming in the dark

slice through thick blink invisible

slice through wax paper apathy

sweet leaks out

brown face in every full crack of air

seeking

sunlight

P.S. Linda:

Your vigilant invitation

for all our attention

to the CA Prisoners hunger strike

was activating heat

to the chlorophyll of change.

P.P.S. The gratitude poem series is my way of thanking the contributors to my dream trip of a lifetime to visit Gloria Joseph (whose beekeeping inspired the poem that inspired this poem) and to commune with the spirit of Audre Lorde!!! I am so excited! To contribute to this trip chip in at: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip