Good morning family!
This is the dance party of my dreams, aerobic workout of gratitude! To get to dance to the tune of Audre Lorde's poetry with so many loved ones is such a gift!!! I can feel Audre Lorde doing a very shoulder-centric dance of affirmation and I can't wait to dance in person with Gloria Joseph in St. Croix! I am completely excited that ride or die, eternal summerian, profoundly brilliant publisher and cherished friend Jess Hoffman has joined the dance party!
I remember when I first met Jess Hoffman in person. Maybe there is nothing that can make you appreciate the miracle of an anti-racist white feminist more than accidentally visiting the most racist white feminist space that you couldn't imagine. Or maybe I would have appreciated meeting Jess and her amazing embodied love on any sunny or rainy day regardless. Either way Jess's role in my life worth more than the sum of my renewed and transformed faith in editing across difference, and my deepened gratitude for anti-racist white people working actively to transform the communities they love so critically. Being friends, comrades, collaborators, loved ones, sisters, teammates, bandmates, and dance partners with you, Jess (yes I am suddenly shifting the second person to directly address YOU, Jess!) is like a favorite song coming on in the community powered radio of my heart. I think the meaning of our friendship is politically important and has lessons for our community, like the friendship between Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich (if I dare compare us at this young age to two of the greatest poets and teachers ever), but more than that, our relationship is an experience that I treasure. I light up at the sight of you. I feel peace and affirmation from knowing you are out there in the universe reading from the same page I am reading from. I love being alive in community with you!!!!
And for any of you who want to join the dance party...check out: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip
Dance
For Jessica Hoffman
After Audre Lorde’s “Making Love to Concrete”
dance in the particular
one city wide
one city steep
long state breaking off
sleek with squashed statement
you live here
on the scribbled embroidery
of the inescapable
dance in the particular
where well intended bridges
sing whole notes to back pain
invite your own becoming
stretch like a thin girl
not afraid of being wrong
not pretending to be necessary
these shoes for steep
these shoes for wide
walking across love
and wanting to be barefoot
dance in the particular
like you already know
like the desert revelated
baby sprung
email proof-reading
detail divinating
fingertip mapmaking
garden fresh breathing in
twelve year old memory
star tail tracing
summer start
you always were
you are
socialist with your lessons
skylight with your smile
forgiving without giving up
and up and up and up and up
you are
you already are
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1 comment:
I absolutely love this. And you are spot-on with your descript of Ms. Hoffman's impact on the world, relationship, and self. As you wrote so crushingly true -- she's a marvel, a miracle.
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