littleblackbook

Real Reading Rainbow: Queer Black Intergenerational BookLUST! Kwanzaa edition!

2011-12-26T12:06:00.001-05:00

Lex's favorite books challenge and qualify Kwanzaa.

whirlwind for the warrior healers

2011-11-17T14:09:00.001-05:00

to the warrior healers organizing trust

notes from post-tornado Durham

with Audre Lorde in transition

after Gwendolyn Brooks

“You have enabled yourself to prove of incalculable aid to many, many women—not just today’s women, but women down the ages...I am have been and always will be proud of you.”

Gwendolyn Brooks to Audre Lorde

“This is the urgency: Live!

and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.”

-Gwendolyn Brooks “Second Sermon on the Warpland”

brook open stream woke

this is how we conduct our blooming

brash and gentle at kitchen tables

falling apart

on living room floors

noise and whip and head turned around

did you just say…

something scattered here

(our several dreams)

played into particles

stepped and stepped over it

trip and trip over

trip over

over

done

something flew apart

arrival is in the instant of yes

glitter your hands with the grace of grief

knot your hair with knowing

never meant to hold money

never meant to braid it into noose

never knew another way was

blooming

ii.

warrior healer be we

who know

how to go there

and when

warrior healer be we

who wont be who we are

until we are

warrior healer be

we who don’t know what

to say

until we say

who speak

when voice shake

better be

say this

warrior healer be

yes

just be

warrior healer be

iii.

salvation salvaged

medication defined

stylized splendor

for Bessie and we

iv.

warrior poet be watching

smiling sometime

laughing

warrior mother poet be

looking down

picking up

wind

love,

lex

'Indigo Was the Folks': Afterschool Brilliance

2011-11-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

"There wasn't enough for Indigo in the world she'd been born to, so she made up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.

Access to the moon.
The power to heal.
Daily visits with the spirits."

-Ntozake Shange on little sister Indigo in her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

We are in my car with the top down dodging the falling leaves when Assata drops knowledge on the subject of grades, a new clarity gained during this first term of 6th grade: "Grades are bullying the alphabet." The girls find out that their hands can bend in ways they never knew. They read outloud parts of the books they are reading. They punch each other very lightly at the sight of a volkswagen bug. And this is just the car ride.

The Indigo Afterschool Program was an idea that 11 year old Alex Lockhart shared with her mother, using the words: "I want to go to an afterschool program at Alexis's house." Inspired by Ntozake Shange's character "Indigo" from her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, the Indigo Afterschool TeaParty is a place to share dreams, make art, blow bubbles and investigate Indigo's practices of healing, self-love, dream interpretation, doll-making, compassion and full self-expression! Girls from 3 Durham middle schools participate!

We check in over tea and snacks letting a deep breath out at the end of our check-ins by blowing a real or imaginary bubble. We make dolls that listen, healing remedies for emotional emergencies, books for our dreams, collages for our visions, love notes for each other in the name of Indigo who used all these things to create the world she needed when she was right in the arena of the menstrual transformation.

It is an honor to participate in the building of community and sisterhood among these brilliant young women, and as the Crunk Feminist Collective reminded us with their development of a women's studies 101 workshop for high school students (http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/feminism-101-or-why-womens-studies-cant-wait-a-workshop-for-girls/)
the intentional support and nourishment of the love, transformation and brilliance that is already living and growing and possible in young people can never start to early.

Indigo Afterschool uses the model of Indigo...just one of many audacious, inventive, complex, community accountable and wise young Black characters created by Black feminist writers to give young folks a chance to love each other and explore their own magical skills, a space to critique the norms they are noticing at school, and a validation of the practices of breathing, creating and listening.

As people around the country reclaim space in their communities to activate their visions I am proud that the space that these 11 year olds (who have just proposed an expansion of the program to bi-weekly sessions) have decided to takeover my living room with their dreams.

(Here is what Alex left on the chalkboard)

Indigo Style Remedies:

Yesterday we read some of Indigo's remedies that she creates after difficult experience and share with her community of dolls so that her growth can also benefit them. Oh Indigo!!!

Rock in the manner of a quiet sea. Hum softly from your heart. Repeat the victim’s name with love. Offer a brew of red sunflower to cleanse the victims blood and spirit. Fasting & silence for a time refurbish the victim’s awareness of her capacity to nourish & heal herself.

-from "Emergency Care For Wounds That Cannot Be Seen" in Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo

The Indigo After School crew also wrote their own remedies yesterday (they also wrote a healing recipe for popcorn, getting past writers block and "boredness").

Here is some of their advice...that I recommend keeping on hand or enacting right now for your own healing:

Emergency Care for the "the funk"
by Bailey
(i.e. like on Glee, when they were in a funk because they were afraid their singing group wasn't good enough)

Surround oneself with loved ones, then go on top of a tall object and scream to hearts content all of ones deepest feelings. If this does not work, go in private room and listen to songs that mention only of happy things, then write down all of ones problems and think of a way to turn them around.

Emergency for Sadness
by Assata

1. go to the bathroom and turn on hot water. let it steam.
2. get your favorite incense and burn it
3. get a robe and put it on
4. put the incense in the bathroom
5. put a stool in the bathroom
6. write all the things you are sad about on a piece of paper
7. write on the steamed mirror all the things that are peaceful
8. sit in the bathroom and be peaceful with the steaming and the incense

Forged by Fire (for hard experiences that change you forever):
by Alex

Bathe in a tub of warm water without bubbles. Slowly lie down and let all the bad energy out. When you get out, don't dry off, instead go to a silent room and let the peaceful air dry you off. Next rub your skin with soothing lavender oil. Now go outside and let the sun wrap its loving rays around you.

Amazing! Priceless and here is how you can support this space!

1. Of course donating to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind one time

or becoming a monthly sustainer helps infinitely to sustain this free program for superhero youth.

2. This community of readers is the best thing ever. Want to send as a winter break gift 1 or 3 copies of your favorite young adult book from when you were around 11? The Indigo afterschoolers are self-identified "cool nerds" and will need a lot of reading material when school lets out next month to keep their brains engaged! Email alexispauline@gmail.com for the address.

3. Or contribute to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Library that surrounds and uplifts the participants and their parents and grandparents and younger siblings and friends by donating a book from the Eternal Summer amazon wishlist!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9

Keeping it quirky, eternal and off the hook!
Love,
lex

"I Know What That Is": Coming Out as Undocumented

2011-11-14T14:37:00.007-05:00

Amnesty International Conference: Come Out, Rise Up and Join the Movement
Lunch Plenary on Coming Out in the South as Queer and Undocumented

Dedicated to Ms. Vera Martin

To get to Ms. Vera we faced our greatest fear. We drove through Arizona. Scarier even than the Mississippi police who separated us for questioning when we told them we were driving across the country interviewing visionary Black LGBTQ feminist elders, was that drive through Arizona in the middle of the night. The closest my partner Julia and I, raised in North Carolina and Georgia, have ever come to the segregation stories we've heard all our lives about travellers scared to stop for gas, to pee, to talk to a stranger, especially after sundown. When we finally did stop, because hail and fog and the presence of elk made it impossible to keep driving through Tonto national park, we put signs on every side of our purple and turquoise RV explaining that we didn't want to stop and we weren't trying to tresspass, but we just couldn't keep going.
We knew where we were: Arizona in the era of the state bill that is a hate bill, where it is illegal to be a person of color, standing still, on land, asking for help. That night was the closest we have come to the stories that make our parents and grandparents shake at the words "police," "highway," "bathroom," "night." The reason my mother tracks our queer black deviant adventurous behinds on Google latitude every step of the way. Probably the reason that Ms. Vera, living in Apache Junction Arizona in a retirement RV park full of white lesbians doesn't get many visitors and in fact laughed out loud at the concept of us, two queer black young people willing to drive through Arizona just to see her, to sit and talk with her in person.
For us, the scary thing about Arizona was that we knew that conservative copy-cat laws would pop up in our region, taking us back to the good old days that give our relatives nightmares, that still turn my father into a completely different person if he gets pulled over by a white Georgia cop. Our folks that know that no amount of hard-boiled eggs and fried chicken packed lunches can save us from that knowledge in the pit of your stomach that for us there is no such thing as home that cannot be taken away, that for us, for generations it has been about trying to move through undetected our queer selves our colored selves in a land where it is illegal to be us and to be loved and to be here all the way, where anyone might notice us and be transformed.
That cop that stopped our purple and turquoise love-mobile in Mississippi was flabbergasted. Queer, feminist, black and intergenerational? What do you mean your "elders"? He squinted. And then he called for back-up.

To love who we love, to claim who and were we come from is dangerous and possibly contagious. We are counting on the contagion of queer Black intergenerational love which is why we would go through Mississippi and Arizona and hail and hell to get to Ms. Vera. Who knew better than anyone why we cannot allow the laws that would pre-emptively and comprehensively invalidate our families. Including anti-immigration laws and includes narrow marriage amendments and includes anti-choice legislation and suggestions to legally say there is no such thing as rape. Ms. Vera knows best of all why we cannot believe for one second the lies those laws would tell about us and must in every moment recognize those attacks as the desperation they are against our brilliance, our unstoppable power against how radiant we are that we inspire even those who try so hard to hate us. We are love and we know it and we are contagious.
And so it makes complete sense that when Ms. Vera told us about her trip to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference, the first thing she spoke of was her love for the young undocumented activists speaking out. "Because I know what that is," she said. Ms. Vera was born in Louisiana in 1924. "I know what that is," she said. Where there is no law that will protect you, only laws to hurt you. Where there are people who so can't deal with you that they want to be able to get away with raping you or killing you and throwing you in a ditch. Where there are people who can see that you are human and don't want to know it, so they try to make you illegal. "I know what that is," Ms. Vera said. "And I love those young people because they're not gonna take it."

Lex on Black Issues Forum! Watch the Full Episode here!

2011-11-13T09:53:00.002-05:00

Watch Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching on PBS. See more from BLACK ISSUES FORUM.

Making Majority: Majority Consciouness and Black Feminist Protest Poems (For the Raleigh Reclaimers)

2011-11-04T09:14:00.000-04:00

Making Majority: Majority Consciouness and BlackFeminist Protest Poems

For the RaleighReclaimers

Nov. 3 2011

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Let’s make somenoise to stay warm out here!!! Make some noise if you are part of that 99% they keep talking about onthe news! Make some noise if youlove how our people in Oakland took over the highway and closed down a majorport in their general strike yesterday! Make some noise if you grew up working class. Make some noise if you are queer. Make some noise if you are in collegenow or if you have a college degree. Take a deep breath and make some noise if you are ablack feminist!!!!!!! Andmake some noise if you are a white person…

Yeah. Majority is complicated. And it can be exhilarating. And it can be facist. And it can tell the truth. And it can lie to our faces. The truth is that we areprofoundly interconnected. We arebigger than ourselves. We aresharing something that we don’t know how to describe, right this second withall the people who live now and all the people who have ever lived. We are sharing something right now withevery energetically linked piece of matter on the planet. We are huge. We are more than 99% we are cosmiceternal quantum dust crashing into itself. The vibration we just made from shouting is more thanwe can know it is.

Atthe same time, majority is complicated. I live in Durham, North Carolina. A majority people of color city with a majority white occupymovement. Majority is complicated. Because the tricky statistics ofmajority has been used as a tool of white supremacy to create norms for a longtime, it is not merely a coincidence that one of the largest, most compelling,media-effective and participatory convergences of direct action that I havewitnessed uses the colonizing military language of occupation. This is where white descendentsof settler colonialists get off calling themselves native North Carolinians,for example. And this is animportant question, not just of terminology, but also of mathematicalunderstanding, because it is not merely a coincidence that the most marketabledirect action we are participating in right now coincides with many actualimperialist occupations by the US around the world and the ongoing occupationof this land that something now called the United States stole throughgenocide. I’m a blackfeminist nerd, I teach about blackfeminist poetry and when it comes to our power, when it comes to our revolutionI care a lot about what words we choose and what numerical reality weimply. But I don’t want to throwthe baby out with the bathwater. It matters to me that what makes folks love this movement of reclaimingour lives and protesting against the violence of capitalism is a deep andgrounded energy, tapped into a planetary connection which is actually not thesame thing as whatever energy has caused white people to believe that they arenormal, straight people to believe that they are normal, middle class people tobelieve that they are entitled to whatever the abject poverty of women of coloraround the world and finger breaking work of working class people in this country invisibly buys us. These two things, the majorly transformativepower of interconnected struggle and love and the majorly status quo affirmingreproduction of normalcy, in my mathematical opinion , are not equal. They are not equally powerful. The first one just might get us theunimaginable world we deserve, and the other one will at best case get us backto the messed up place we were 5 years ago.

Itis the statistically significant difference between saying. “Hey! Iam part of the 99%. Everyone elseis just like me and I am just like everyone else and I deserve the job andeducation I always thought I was entitled and damn the 1% fat cats for stillbeing able to maintain what I always thought I deserved and could get if Iworked hard enough and was smart enough and white enough and straight enoughfor long enough.” It is thedifference between saying that and saying “I am part of this planet and I am interconnected with all life. I refuse to continue to contribute myenergy to a system that is killing all of us. I refuse to consent to the fragmentation of capitalism and Icommit to building power creatively with everyone and everything that isdifferent to me towards our common survival which could also be calledlove. I am interconnectedwith everything and I am promising with my body to reclaim the truth. I am connected to you from a deeperpalce than I can see and I am doing my best to act accordingly.”

Y’allsee how these are not the same things? And I care about this movement. And so I am bringing what I love most into this conversation, that whichhas brought me most clarity and refined my actions. Also known as the longstanding intersectional super stars ofkeepin’ it complicated all days in all ways…I am bringing Black Feminist Poetsinto the mix, towards the movement we deserve. Drawing on a very different tradition of MajorityConsciousness coming out of the anti-colonial movements in the Caribbean and inAfrica and in Asia, Black Feminist in the United States were part of the thirdworld consciousness raising movement, affirming the reality that the majorityof the people in the world are people of color, the majority of the people inthe world are women, and yet, the most consistently oppressed category ofalmost person on the planet is this same powerful group: women of color. So as you think aboutthis, think about your interface with the movement of the 99% not so poeticallycalled “occupy” and think about what the role of women of color has been in thesegment of this movement that you have seen. Think about whether and how the absence, presence,form of labor, forms of leadership, interventions of women of color have beenreceived by the false majority and whether that honors the majority of peoplein the world. On NewYear’s day 1989 thinking about the prospect of a black presidential candidateto the White House (named Jesse Jackson), Black feminist lesbian warrior mother poet icon Audre Lorde feltcompelled to bring out fractions. About how the US and USSR (at the time the main interlocuters in thedebate about the destiny of the planet) were only 1/8 of the population,actually. And that African peoplewere also 1/8 of the population and that ½ of the people in the world wereAsian. Lorde breaks it down,slowing to the methodical tempo of white supremacy and then speeding up :

“So most people in this world/

are Yellow, Black , Brown, Poor,Female

Non-Christian

And do not speak English.”

Most of you, probably all of you,know this intellectually. It goeswithout saying. So whydoes Audre Lorde bother to bring the math into it, in a poem, in English. The language I am using now,which as she points out most people on the planet do not speak. Because the question of majorityis always at stake. This is whythe “I am the 99% campaign” has been so important as a way of actually talkingabout the experiences of most of the people when television and the songs ofthe radio seem to come from the experiences of only the super-rich in order toencourage consumerism. If I wereto believe the “I am the 99%” posts that I have seen on the internet it wouldseem that the majority of the people in the world have massive studentloans. And while I certainlyworked my way through college and took on major student loans in the processand I think it is very important to unpack meritocracy and throw off the shamethat is associated with debt. We also have to remember privilege. It is not that the majority of people in the world areoppressed by student loans. Themajority of the people in the world are oppressed by capitalism such thatcollege is not an option. Themajority of this generation of college students may have student loans, butthese two things are not the same.

Because another important thing about Lorde’s poem isthat she maintains difference. Sheis not arguing that everyone on the planet is the same, she is giving us thefractions. There is actually somuch difference on the planet that is completely left out of theconversation. So the liberatoryquestion is not how can we all lump together as the same thing, the realquestion is the one Audre Lorde asked in her essay on the creative power ofdifference, and which, incidentally Angela Davis, black feminist freedomfighter raised at the Wall Street encampment a few days ago:

"Howcan we come together in a unity that is complex and emancipatory? Differencesmust not be merely tolerated but seen as a fund of necessary polarities betweenwhich poles creativity can spark like a dialectic."

And indeed, as many people before mehave said the most important and exciting thing about this whole movement thatwe are participating in is that it truly has brought different people who arenot generally in the same spaces and not generally speaking to each other,together in powerful ways, and asked all of us to be creative in our listeningthrough the demands of direct democracy. It inspired Angela Davis to say last weekend that “Theold majorities are the new majorities,” that there is something, awakened,referenced, remembered by this contemporary movement that precedes it, that themajority that we invoke is not simply the breakdown of American wealth amongthe living, but actually includes our collective ancestral power, including thepower and resilience of the indigenous inhabitants of this land and includingthe power of the enslaved people who build and bled into this structure andloved anyway, and including all of those movement warriors who have burnt out,gotten sick and died, been killed via hate violence or by police. It means when we invoke majority we arealso saying, we are all here, our mandate for changing the world is certainlybigger than those of us who have the time to be here physically and is biggereven than the combined bodies of those of us who have survived this system tothis point. Our mandate to changethe world is old and it honors our ancestors and it calls up their energy.

NikkiFinney, a black feminist lesbian poet from South Carolina believes that thereis such as thing as ancestral rage. That oppression in the present not only disrespects and dishonors thoseof us living through it, but it also disrespects the work and truth andbrilliance of those who came before us, who deserved better than what theyexperiences and who expect more from us than this. In her first collection of poems On Wings Made of Guaze, Finney has a protest poems that speaksout against the Atlanta Child murders, a rash of murders and disappearances ofBlack children in Atlanta, the city where I grew up, and where Finney lived atthe time of the murders which began in 1979, the same year that closer to home in Greensboro, the KKKopened fire on economic and racial justice organizers at a rally in the middleof the day. Which is alsothe same year that in Boston 12 black women were found dead day after day in 3short months. In each case thepolice did not respond to the murders as murders. In the case of the Greensboro massacre the people who wereattacked were the ones brought up on charges. What does one do in a year like 1979 where the lives ofblack women, black children and black activists are so clearly devalued by thestate, and how is it related to what we do this year, when Troy Davis issacrificed to the right of police officers to threaten people to get falsetestimonies and to fulfill their so-called justice agenda by choosing anoppressed person to prosecute for any crime that happens? When those who are having to face themusic about the low value of their lives are more and more of the population that used to feel safe and worthyall the time.

NikkiFinney invokes a majority constructed of time and the natural world to dosomething related to what we are doing here today and in the next couple ofdays when we move whatever little money we have out of the big banks and intothe community credit unions, asking for a new set of accounts. In a poem that she dedicates to “thechildren of Atlanta, the children we claim who died, who are dying because theyare Black….for the children whose lives we claim and whose deaths now claimus” Finney calls on a higher senseof balance and justice than what the world bank would use to classify debt andwho is a drain on the system. Forthose, who like me, were not born yet in 1979, we have to remember that 1979 isthe same year that Ronald Reagan won the presidential election with a campaignthat centered on the characiture of the welfare queen and the untrue projectionthat the majority of people on welfare were black women who were cheats, thatthe primary beneficiaries were black children who were a drain on the nationalbudget and didn’t deserve anything. It is a major year for the growth of what we now understand as globalneoliberal capitalism, a system of debt-making in the name of restructuring onthe planet. 1979 is also the yearthat the major institution that laid the groundwork for what we know of as theRadical Right was created, calledthe Moral Majority. See whatI mean. Majority is complicated,and everyone invokes it when they feel like it So what kind of Major are we?

Nikki Finney calls on the world towitness the violence against Black children saying:

world

don’t ever come to us again

heart in hand

hoof in mouth

ancient eyes in full bloom

don’t even look this way

asking to replenished

to be restocked

we are paid in full

for this

and for the next millenniums

incensed enough we are

until this world ends

and something else begins

paid up we are

tell your hands world

sign it out to your fingers

insist that your eyes remember

how this time

we have overpaid you

we owe nothing

no more

pass this word on

to the rivers behind you

for the next one thousand years

we are paid in full

In the economic frame of 1979, thisis a big deal. In fact in thecurrent economic frame where most of us are in debt, and those of use who don’thave the credit to get any more debt are positioned to conceptually owesomething to the society that profits off our lack of choices this poem is veryrevolutionary. Look at theviolence we are experiencing, Finney’s poem says, what kind of balance is this? What kind of accountability. Forget it. We do not owe anything. Not only because our lives havebeen unjustly sacrificed in many ways, not only in honor of those ancestors whowere forcibly removed from this very places, or those other ancestors who wereforcibly brought to the place and built it for free without freedom, but alsobecause we are beyond the economic calculations that make up our lives. We are more than a market. And as Finney’s poetics reveal,we persist beyond that which would crunch us into numbers as debt. The “We are” of the poem moves out thenormal position within a sentence. In the second to last stanza of the poem she offers “incensed enough weare, paid up we are” instead of we are incensed enough, weare paid up. The “we are” thestubborn miracle of our existence, is still there, yoda like, after thedescriptive action. And actually,the original construction that she starts with “we are paid” leaves poeticambiguity about who we are actually , the first line “in full we are paid” is an archaic construction that leavesquestions about what is the subject of the sentence. We, paid. Is paid an action, an adjective. Is full a place to be. Looking at Finney’s poem about reckoning accounts makes me wonder aboutthe economic arguments we have been making from a poetic standpoint. We have been affirming thatwe are the 99%. Individualizing: “I am the99%” Now is the time to lookcritically 99% percent we are. To truly examine what we are part of beyond the desperate gratitude ofbeing part of something is the task before us. What is truly major about this, and how does it impactwhat we do. To use Nikki Finney’slanguage who claims us, where is the accountability that transcends howdisgruntled we are about our bank accounts? Who do we honor with these actions?

Whatthis movement is demonstrating is that where we place our bodies is a questionof accountability, honor and claim. In Philadelphia and other places explicit solidarity with, andleadership by homeless Philadelphians who have been criminalized for claimingspace in the streets has been crucial. What does it mean for people with homes to place their privileged bodiesbetween the action of the police and the right of a homeless person to sleepsomewhere. What does it mean forthe outrage at police acts of repression and violence in several cities to belinked in the news media, in the form of images and focus, on the fact that somany white people are being arrested, so much of the population that the daybefore they became protesters, were inequitably over-served by the violence ofthe police against more traditionally oppressed communities? Tear gas canisters and billyclubs, rubber bullets and the training language among the police that thenon-violent orchestrated protests around the country should be treated asriots? One way the Wall Streetincarnation of this movement responded to some of these questions was to usethe mass of people reclaiming the street create a direct action in Harlem,specifically challenging the violent racist practice of the police stopping andsearching black people on the streets. June Jordan, black feminist poet with intimate andviolent experience with the actions of the New York City police department,again invoked what I call black feminist math, the alchemy of poetry andproportions to look at the meaning of police violence, in one of her mostfamous poems; Poem on PoliceViolence:

On the heels of the acquittal ofpolice officer Thomas O’Shea forthe murder of a 10 year old unarmed black boy named Clifford Glover who wasrunning away from O’Shea. The agreement by a jury that Thomas O’Shea was justified in his actionbecause of how threatening black children are to grown white policeofficers with guns. Thomas O’Shea was recorded saying whilehis police radio was on: “die you little motherfucker” as he shot 10 year oldClifford in the back. In court hedefended himself by saying “I didn’t see the size nor nothing else. Only the color.”

So June Jordan asks:

“Tell me something

what you think would happen if

everytime they kill a black boy

then will kill a cop…

you think the accident rate wouldlower

subsequently?”

And she goes into the math of it;

“18 cops in order to subdue on man

18 strangled him to death in theensuing scuffle (don’t

you idolize the diction of thepowerful: subdue and

scuffleoh my) and that the murder

that the killing of Arthur Milleron a Brooklyn

street was just a “justifiableaccident” again

(again)”

How do we live in a world where ourbodies are not equal. Where thelife of a police officer and the life of a black child are not equal. Where to be honest, the white body of acollege student and that body of color of a college student are not seen thesame as police or school administrators. Where safety means different things for those of uswho have survived sexual violence. Where the bodies of homeless people and the bodies of students, wherethe bodies of students and the bodies of workers do not balance out into anykind of equation. How do we useour privilege? Where do we place our bodies? Who should get arrested? Where should we stand in order tostand up for each other? Who should do what kind of work? 18 to one or one to one? Beyond Jordan’s propositions aboutproportions are the places where she falls out of rhythm and reveals thatactually what a life is equal to cannot be quantified. It only be approached by poetry. She says

“sometimes the feeling like amazeme baby

comes back to my mouth and I amquiet”

“sometimes thinking about the 12^thHouse of the Cosmos

or the way your ear ensnares thetip

of my tongue or signs that I havenever seen

like DANGER WOMEN WORKING”

Our bodies are possible futuresthat end when we are sacrificed by the state or by each other. Amazement. Signs that we have never seen. Our bodies are places where lovegets actualized and electrified. That one body that you live in, the body of a personthat you love is not interchangeable with anything on a one to one or eighteento one basis. How do we hold themath and the meaning together in a way that honors everyone here and everyonewho is not here for any reason and everyone we remember and everyone we hope willbe born. Majority is complicated.

Andfinally how do will fill this time, activate our purpose, understand theinterconnected issues that my not be calculable into unpaid bills orpercentages of debt to be decreased, or lost retirement savings or years leftto work? How do we hold the ongoing violence of genocide in mind whileinsisting and benefiting from the language of occupation on stolen land? How do we account for the needs of themajority of us who are survivors or co-survivors of sexual violence and manyother forms of trauma in an anarchist or directly democratic space likethis. The last blackfeminist poem I will bring is Ntozake Shange’s With No Immediate Cause.

Where she reminds us what is goingon in our society most of the time:

“every 3 minutes a woman is beaten

every five minutes a woman is raped

every ten minutes a lil girl ismolested”

She goes through her dayencountering the traumatic repetition of system violence, using the statisticsgenerated by the movement to end violence against women to create anothermajority, the perpetual presence of violence, and the perpetual traumaticreawakening of survivors to the trauma they have experienced. As a survivor and a person who ishorrified by any act of gendered violence, she has to wonder if each person sheencounters participated in the routine practice of violence at some minute,three minutes ago or 30 years ago. And when she reads her newspaper outraged that they report:

“there is some concern

that alleged battered women

might start to murder

their husbands & lovers with no

immediate cause”

We should think about those in thismovement of the 99% who dismiss the concerns of survivors of sexual violenceabout what it means to truly create safety, not only from the police, but alsowithin our progressive movement where gendered violence is still an issue as itis within all communities. Weshould think about what it means to dismiss those concerns in favor of more“immediate” priorities, like how to look badass and have an encampment. We should think about those whodespite the critique of the language of occupation brought by indigenousactivists and allies again and again feel like at this point the brand is moreimportant than our outrage. That the immediate issue is the banks and thatsettler colonialism is an issue that is somehow over, when the land is stilloccupied, when genocide is a traumatic violence that we experience right now inthe present through the continued disrespect and refusal to acknowledgeindigenous presence and history all over this continent. And we should learn from Shangewhen in response to the nonsense about no immediate cause, and theadministrative inconvenience that the self-defense of survivors of genderedviolence would cause she says,

“I spit up I vomit I am screaming

we all have immediate cause

every 3 minutes

every 5 minutes

every 10 minutes

every day…”

We have cause to stand up for eachother. Immediately. And ethical majority, meansacknowledging that time is full with reasons to listen to each other, tosupport each other, to transform ourselves towards true solidarity with eachother across so many differences. Thankyou for finding immediate cause to act on what you believe in. Thank you for filling your time withthis experiment of how we can live and for how long together. For asking how solid our solidarity canbe. You are more than 99%. You are the whole future. You are doing this in the sight of ourancestors and the trees that used to be here and the sun that could rise. And history will ask us what was thismostly about, will ask, while making major history, what kind of a majority didwe make together? And whenit adds up and we answer I hope all my black feminist ancestors and elders willbe prouder than a math problem, proud like a poem beating in the middle of yourheart, in the ground and all around. I hope you will be proud of who we were. This complicated majority. All of us.

Thank you.

Love is Lifeforce: June Jordan and the Horizon of Education

2011-10-28T09:45:00.002-04:00

Greetings loved ones! I'd love to see you at the second installment of the Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future at Stanford L. Warren Library!

Tuesday, November 1 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Stanford L. Warren Library

1201 Fayetteville Street

Durham, NC

In this the second part in the "Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future" this lecture draws on author June Jordan's essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. In a time when the education budgets for Durham schools are under attack and the Wake County schools are actively resegregating, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will present a multi-faceted vision for educational justice in our times.

“We Are More Loved Than We Know”: Masculinity, Feminism and the Love that Will Save Our Lives

2011-10-24T16:39:00.002-04:00

From http://thefeministwire.com

June Jordan teaches that: “Love is lifeforce.” And the healing power of love has saved my life more than once. In the name of this truth I affirm the arrival of Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois, a recent resource published by the Brown Boi Leadership project and written by masculine of center queer people of color and their allies.

I think of this resource guide as a chapter that should have been, but never would have been in Our Bodies Ourselves or even in Jambalaya. A resource that my partner, who identifies as a Black feminist boi and a gender queer artist, and our children one day will probably not read cover to cover chronologically like I did, but will flip through, looking at affirming and beautiful photography, reading stories of how people we know and strangers survived trauma, transformation and the oppression of the medical industrial complex. They will browse it for a list of self-advocating questions before finding a health care provider. We will look at for options of how we want to get pregnant, what health issues we should look out for at different ages, how one gender affirming surgery differs from another one. Freeing Ourselves is a non-linear invocation of a community of people with different needs, at different stages of life, with different approaches to their own wellness and wholeness who will interact with this book from where they are at, and then differently again at another moment. It is a tiny, audience-specific, audience-accountable encyclopedia.

“We are working towards profound social change, knowing that there are no disposable people or communities. We all need to be here.”
– Brown Boi Health Manifesto by Prentis Hemphill (119)

Read the entire review here: http://thefeministwire.com/2011/1

Way Home (Gratitude Poem #33)

2011-10-11T07:07:00.001-04:00

Way Home

For Lea Salas

After Audre Lorde’s “LunarEclipse”

from here the moon is a spotlight

wearing stockings

an unfocused yes

but you are driving gloves

and self-reflexive chisme

purple and passionate

yoga mat pushed aside

to make room for baggage

and the dirt and grass we drag along

you are the taut string

for the tiny tin can parade

of arriving almost safe as self

you are dyke chivalry

and the words “of course”

you are the truth in headlights dear

you are the way home.

*******

So many people have given me rides to and from the airport in Durham in sweet disregard for their discontent at how often I leave the city I love. If I were them I would refuse. Shut it down. Teach me a lesson called "stay at home." But until they reach that consensus I will just be grateful and remain faithful to promise to always come back. Lea is the person who has given me the most rides to and from the airport in this phase of life, and in particular she is the person who gave me the rides to and from the airport that framed my trip to St. Croix. I love being in the car with Lea, hearing the scrumptious updates on her life, love and adventures and spilling the first splashed of my excitement to be home. Thank you Lea for being the way. For being the truth. For bringing me home.

Land (Gratitude Poem #32)

2011-10-06T07:59:00.003-04:00

Land

For Chanelle Gallant

After Audre Lorde’s“Peace on Earth”

a star fell last night

as I drove myself

almost out of gas

to the grease slicked doorstep

of exhaustion

and where did it land

heaven drop

pressure of wishes

did you see it

i ate french fries

and absently sketched

a veggie fuel rocket engine

a self-contained compost toilet

an ethical escape

and told myself

a falling star is not a bomb

tires pattern bald

from skating the edge

of not enough

on autopilot

what atmospheric freeze

must crack

before I wake up.

Chanelle Gallant who are you? Dream come true? Star I wished on as a kid? Whoever you are I am so thankful for your support and love. Not only did you donate to the specific cause of my journey to connect with my chosen ancestors and black feminist family, you even convinced another friend who doesn't know me to do the same! I think on nights like last night where dance class is cancelled and sleep deprivation and really bad food is making me feel like an unsustainable gas-fueled society, I will remember you. And your sweet action and the fact that there is something bright somewhere, spreading glitter in motion, spreading love along the way. Gallant indeed. Who needs a knight in shining armor when there are stars like Chanelle landing on earth when you least expect them.

So much love to you Chanelle. May everything you touch near or from afar be as blessed as I feel right now.

Always,

Lex

Flight (Gratitude Poem #31)

2011-10-05T11:28:00.000-04:00

Flight

For Romham Gallacher

After Audre Lorde’s“Depreciation”

First the banks

then the river run right

through the treasury

then vehicles that transport gas

don’t have gas to run

no more.

Between the corporate credit computer crash

the downfall of drummed up dept worldwide

and the heirloom seed-bomb airlift

there is plenty to eat

and nowhere to hide.

I don't know Romham Gallacher from Adam. So it is a big deal that a perfect stranger, who happens to have heard about my work from a person they respect was one of the first people to make a financial contribution to my trip to St. Croix. The note on paypal said, "My friend Chanelle alerted me to your chip in. I've not much to offer, but every penny counts! Best of luck on getting to St. Croix!"

I'm actually not sure who Chanelle is either.

The donations that loved ones from all parts of my life have given towards this trip have overwhelmed me with gratitude. I am so lucky to be loved by so many people, and for so long, and with such tangibility and grace. But this donation, from someone who I do not know and who decided because of their love for their own friend and their belief that it was the right thing to do, to make a donation and send luck and positive energy my way overwhelms me with hope. It is not always clear to me that I live in a world in which strangers wish a wayward queer Black girl best of luck. In which they hope I succeed. In which they believe I deserve to commune with my ancestors and elders whether or not I can personally, individually, financially afford it. Romham's gift is an affirmation of that truth, and it builds my faith in the world that we deserve. It reminds me that our love is stronger than the systems that separate us.

So this poem is for Romham. Whoever you are. Towards the world that we believe in. And deserve.

Full (Gratitude Poem #30)

2011-10-04T06:40:00.002-04:00

Full

For Ms. Helga

After Audre Lorde’s“Kitchen Linoleum”

The moon

who is watching

and the crystal

who is waiting

will shake off their whiteness

evolve past transparency

will monthly

align

towards your joy.

Ms. Helga Emde is a healer and counselor who works with children who are survivors of abuse at the Women's Coalition of St. Croix. The Women's Coalition of St. Croix has existed for more than 30 years and was founded by women who after an inspiring talk by Audre Lorde at the University of St. Croix (at the time the College of St. Croix) began to share their experiences of domestic violence and sexual assault. According to Dr. Gloria Joseph, one member of the community stood and said, what should we do with all of this energy and all of these stories? And Audre Lorde responded Get a pencil and a piece of paper and write your names and information down so you can meet again. The women did meet again and ultimately founded this organization which has had a long lasting impact on St. Croix and which also provided an amazingly aligned workplace for Ms. Helga, who actually organized Audre Lorde's first poetry reading in Frankfurt Germany in 1987, when she moved to St. Croix from Frankfurt 10 years ago.

Ms. Helga claims not to know many young lesbians. "You are the future my dear!" she exclaimed the first day I met her. I know that it was no small thing for Ms. Helga who had never met me before to open up the home she and Dr. Joseph share to a strange young visitor with early morning yoga, dance and ocean rituals for 2 weeks. I am so grateful for Ms. Helga's hospitality. I learned so much from watching her gather her crystals to be energized by the full moon, helping to put up storm shutters in anticipation of tropical storm Maria at meeting her enthusiastic colleagues at the Women's Coalition in the midst of their transition out of a burned down building. It is an honor to affirm Ms. Helga and her healing.

P.S. You can read more about Ms. Helga in her own (translated) words in the anthology Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out.

What (Gratitude Poem #29)

2011-10-03T08:10:00.000-04:00

What

For Julia

After Audre Lorde’s “Change”

what sweat baptism

what tilt of equity

what requiem for who I was you make

thrust trust onto shore

preached practiced pressed

here waves bring salt

savor and save

wounds bring their own salvation

and name it never

name it home

name it necessary healing

name it you

Julia Roxanne Wallace. You are the gift that keeps on giving. I am so grateful to you for insisting that I follow my spirit and take this trip to St. Croix even when I felt like I didn't have the time to spare and wouldn't be able to raise the money. I am grateful to you for saying that spending our first-date anniversary with Audre in St. Croix was an affirmation to our love and for reminding me that we'll have many many many more first-date anniversaries to spend together. Thank you for being abundant in your love for me and teaching me to live abundantly guided by love. By the time I've posted this poem I'll already have another love poem for you. Thank you for assuring that I will always have that central motivation for poetry: a love that transcends words.

Rarely Make (Gratitude Poem #28)

2011-09-29T10:33:00.001-04:00

Rarely Make

Well Deserved and Badly Behaved Poems For Linda Bryant

After Audre Lorde’s“Inheritance-His”

face my words

reassembled

face my sunglassed face

mouth covered by hands

black and white forever

speak and be heard

and be

II.

scene

it is a closet

with a couch

where piles of blue and purple books

wait for their day out front

or to be assigned by an emory professor

Sister Outsidersits inside

and I look for a first line

to live through

III.

love is right

there

just choose it

and keep it

and carry it

everywhere

IV.

a book is

a portable place

to live

you can grow flowers

and food

you can write before sunrise

you can walk soft as you want

gentle and generous on the world

quietly proud

but you will always stand loud in my heart.

Was I 14 or 15 years old when my friend Elizabeth Anderson took that picture of me, hiding in straightened hair, sunglasses and a laugh covered by my two large hands for the "Seen and Heard" youth poetry competition sponsored by Charis Books and More and the Atlanta Journal Constitution?
It was such a big deal to me to have my words on a wall and in the newspaper. And that was how I met you Linda. That was how I learned about the High School Women's Writing Group at Charis. That is what led to many after-school and weekend afternoons, writing and talking about writing, and talking about things that I might otherwise have been afraid to write about. It was a space where I could be myself and explore how to describe myself in the transformation of growing. It was a space you dedicated your life to creating and nurturing. It was a space where you introduced me to other Black feminist geniuses like Pearl Cleage, Doria Roberts, Shay Youngblood, Fiona Zedde.

Which means now for 15 years you have been there, as an example, as an adviser, as a fairy godmother reminding me to stay grounded as everything changes. Affirming my choices even as they defy convention. Showing me by your life and reminding me in your words that it will all work out as long as I am present to magic, as long as live as true as I can and listen to my heart and when I can, write down what it is saying.

I learned over and over again that well-behaved women and well-behaved bookstores rarely make history. Thank you for lovingly tending that rare bravery that makes everything possible!

I love you Linda!!!!

Garden (Gratitude Poem #27)

2011-09-28T14:17:00.001-04:00

Garden

For Doc Gloria I. Joseph

After Audre Lorde’s “Restoration”

and Michelle Cliff's Turtle Crawle

imagine having

your own

god

reach in your pocket

and there she is

future fabulous

sand cracked and smooth

god bless

she who rebuilds in replica

home must be small enough

to fit in your hand

wide enough to carry you away

beautiful enough

you dare not forget

where you put it

that which cannot be

exchanged explained

expands over skin

somewhere it is always Wednesday

anything can happen

bury dog days to come

and lose them

draw bone clean water up

soak whatever you cannot keep

in secret strength

what is not for sale

what is not for you

to see grow fickle

tickle your forehead into triumph

true down to your gut

your own god

imagine

and laugh.

After almost a year of email correspondence Doc Joseph made it plain.

"Dear Alexis, Once again, greetings from a beautiful,sunny warm St. Croix, the island that you will soon be visiting because, -- your spirit calls you here, I call you to visit, and Audre's spirit beckons you. You now have three wonderful reasons to visit."

Such clarity! It made me question the reasons that I had NOT planned my visit to St. Croix. Money, time, fear. And as is true in the love story of Black Feminism the spirit of a young black feminist, a black feminist elder and a black feminist ancestor cannot be stopped by perceived scarcity. The power of three made me free! And Dr. Joseph deciding that a complete stranger could visit for 2 weeks was a big deal! During my second week in St. Croix Doc Joseph started telling the elders who kept asking if I was her granddaughter, "yes she is and she'd better behave like it!" and that she wished it could have been three weeks instead. And actually Doc Joseph, raised in Yonkers by parents from St. Croix, looks and sounds a lot like my tall opinionated paternal grandmother Lydia May (Gibbs) Gumbs who was raised in Perth Amboy New Jersey by a father from St. Thomas (a neighboring Virgin Island).

I loved working in Doc Joseph's garden with her, witnessing her morning water aerobics, learning about her Ndebele inspired paintings on the outside of her house, hunting down roadside avocado and roti, and especially hearing the amazing stories about the armed takeover of Cornell for Black Studies, the founding impetus for Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa, the bee collective, a very exclusive society called the Crones (the two founding members made two rules, "all new members must be over 65 and agree with us"--there have been no new members), and of course hearing the many many stories about Audre Lorde's life in St. Croix and across Europe and the clarity of her last days.

So from watching Al Sharpton's Politics Nation to debating the impact of metaphysics on US Open Tennis results on the beach, surviving loss of all phone lines, and WAPA power outages, to sifting through letters, articles, unpublished interviews and decades old master's theses and dissertations about Lorde's work I feel privileged to have been invited as family into the life of a black feminist elder living in the present with the power of memory. If Black Feminism is a religion, this was a pilgrimage, and Doc Joseph is the guru, oracle, riddle-bearer in the wilderness.

P.S. Here is one Cruzan riddle:

Q: What is the plural of mongoose?

FA (false answers): Mongeese? Mongooses? Mongii?

RA (real answer): No! Mongoose 'dem.

Walking Arawak Road (Gratitude Poem #26)

2011-09-11T11:58:00.002-04:00

Walking Arawak Road

For Pop-pop

After Audre Lorde’s Hugo I

once i was coral

living breathing speaking

to you

who would listen

once

layered days ago

lifetimes

storm was affirmation

once you were the you I prayed for

once rain was blessing living breathing once

we built our days

for presence

because where air

touch ground

touch water

is now

is always

people without winter

who could float

sometime we knew

we would always exist

that our bodies

deep of water

would shout our names

some hurricane later

we were here

we were

here

where

hush

once

we were not afraid

to blow away

Stat (Gratitude Poem #25)

2011-09-10T10:25:00.003-04:00

Stat

For Justin Smith

After Audre Lorde’s “East Berlin”

now the danger is statistical

to be black brilliant bold

bound to black brave bold

boys bending backwards brave

to be beside yourself

is a statistical danger

blood calls blatant

brash back to books

beyond brackets

beyond the secondary function

of your heartbeat

on someone else’s clock

brain the name

for black boy purgatory

blink the blessings

be the truth

where beam basquiat hemphill

wash their veins

wring their wrath

ring their hair

around your finger

waking up is a commitment ceremony

because you remember

so remember this too:

when you sit there in class

wishing you were back

in brazil

or over my house

or somewhere else

categorically more cool

remember your own meaning

significant difference

your own clamoring correlations

you are not a problem set

you are blame game tournament upset

day of reckoning longed for

freedom song refrain

in every fold of your brain

black brilliant bold

unstoppable and blue

you are a statistical danger

coming true

*********

Dear Justin,

I am here in St. Croix on this dream trip that you helped me achieve and thinking about you. I thought I wonder where Justin is right now...and thought probably in Statistics class, damn. But then I thought about how grateful I am and how grateful all our chosen and given queer black ancestors are that you are doing the work that you are doing, getting your PhD, spreading the healing word and bringing much needed resources to the communities we love and I thought that I am really glad that you exist. And I am glad that you are in whatever meeting, class, study group, cycle of TA grading that you are in. You are an affirmation of our ancestors and our brilliant communal future at all times, in all things and in all places. You are a miracle. I am so happy to witness you.

Sometimes at school (especially prestigious predominately white institutions like where we've been educated) people seem to think that it is so unlikely that we would be there. We are some small percentage point unplanned for and exploited by the institution. And the institution shows it so many ways, from forgetting our funding to placing us in unasked for spotlights and using us as excuses not to address structural inequities and on and on right?

Well I say fuck it. They think they know, but they have no idea. You were destined to be exactly where you are doing exactly what you are doing. It is not unlikely. It is 100% on purpose on time within your plan and within the destiny of our community. I know it. All our ancestors know it. Our whole community feels it in the pulse you are affirming whether they know your name yet or not! Stat!

Love you always and grateful for you always,

Lex

Origin (Gratitude Poem #24)

2011-09-09T10:04:00.002-04:00

For Jade Brooks

After Audre Lorde’s “Speechless”

your words root old growth

forest abundant

breadcrumbs and brick-a-brack

you specify home

tactile sticky stuffed

crowded clarities

you bring them all

walk through thought-mined

truth exploded here

where did you learn

those branch swung moss heavy

tangled dark tales

sometimes I think you come from a cave

where witches carve themselves

with the story of living

smudged into the story that is the soul

that has the same story waiting

you call it “Oregon”

close enough

we all have our

pronunciations

and I pronounce you

prophetess poet popsicle puddle

pick up stix champion

inkstained initiate

permanent marker principal

whoever you want

to be.

*********

Dear Jade,

I hope you are having a beautiful day. An eternal summer despite the increased intensity of labor during the academic year at a workplace like yours in a city like the one we are so lucky to live in at the same time. You see that I fled town to a place where the concept of Eternal Summer is less provocative and more obvious. Your amazing support, attendance, in-kind and the other kind of kind donations have been so consistent and transformative and helpful the whole time you have lived in Durham. And your poetry is amazing. You have such a distinct voice that I wonder where you got it. How you kept it. What you grew it out of. From here it sounds like the words are just there. So many of them. Just waiting and you peel them off the top and there are so many more waiting. You might have a different experience of your own writing. Thick, descriptive, fruitful, charming. It makes me wonder sometimes if ancestors have been placing post-it notes on your sticky fingers, piling you up with messages to deliver to us all. Maybe that's it.

Sending you so much love from St. Croix, where the ancestor messages are loud, and if not crowding than certainly overflowing.

So much love to you!!!

Always,

Lex

star-apple (Gratitude Poem #23)

2011-09-07T11:34:00.006-04:00

star-apple

For Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

After Audre Lorde’s “What It Means to Be Beautiful”

bloom your name around my mouth

stoned tongue move bolder

teach me there is nothing

that cannot be said

shown

grown

bloom

your name

ii.

those who wont face

the taste of leaving

will lie about medusa’s

dreadlocked freedom

and the secret of everything beautiful

will fear us

freezer burn their own dreams

at the sound of our love

will break neck not look

reach for stories turned sword

talk bad about truth behind their own backs

headless

iii.

how dare we

prize spit over toothpaste

breathe common air classless

zip mudslides into minis

wear chains like trinkets

how dare we know

how to tuck home into cleavage

and bring it out

flower magic

how dare we be

free

all out loud

and in public

and shit

iv.

well

from my bad back

to your braced embrace

there is clear cold water

bright bubble brilliance

unbitten by kidnappers

who nightmared on mermaids

seasoned in iron

sludge and the sperm they say got us here

razor wire and the riddle of rice

there is everything

here in the place we pull from

diaspora drownable

untouchable sweetness

there is baptism here

dear leah

this morning

scoliosis and a storm coming

i am breathing

homesick smells

what the ocean steals inside plants

what salt stays

with those of us who survive

and i feel so fucking strong.

love lex

***********************

Leah! Brownstargirl. You are the truth. This is the best way I know how to say it. Thank you so much for being on this journey with me, in the specific sense and the general sense. Poet warrior femme shark allstar all the way home.

Writing to you on my first morning in St. Croix feels so write and so lucky. How blessed am I to have such an audience as you. You inspire me in so many ways. Blood related because we carry so many of the same ancestors in our hearts, through our veins, reach for them and each other with our writing (cooking, folding, loving) hands. You are a source of strength in my everyday and a grounding force on a day like this where (tropical storm on the horizon and black feminist bliss ancestral occupation on overdrive) I feel like I could literally blow away.

I love you so much!!!!

Always,

Lex

Don't Sleep (Gratitude Poem #22)

2011-09-07T11:34:00.005-04:00

Don’t Sleep

For Lisa Factora-Borchers and Ella Baker

After Audre Lorde’s “Starting All Over Again”

strange hour survivor

radar to realness

sister call

dear daily deep

cross ocean love

short enough

to say-it- all

by voice

by votive

by video

explain why

we should never have

to explain

ourselves

or our mothers

ever

again

to any

m*&^%#f*&^%n’ body

of water or landed class

why our own faces

are enough

lips to unknown sea

tremble the planet

when we believe

our unbelievable selves

slick with inexplicability

sleeves heartstained with prayer

burn our hungry visions

river bank urgent

write all night

share sleep with ghosts

dream the unguessed futures

of guest workers

worthy of a son returned

a shadow rising

a hunch

i wake up

believing in that

i wake up believing in you

we wake up ready

fresh with belief

in that

you

that believes

in us

with a life starting love

that

don’t

sleep.

(so you can.)

*********

Dear Lisa,

Last night I couldn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. And I love to sleep. This has happened to me before. Used to be the night before going to visit my grandparents in Anguilla, the first day of school, Christmas Eve and last night before journeying to St. Croix. My eyes fly open craving the clock.

Last night I couldn't sleep and now I am daydreaming about you and your middle-of-the-night letters. Early morning emails after staying up thinking. And I am thinking about what Sweet Honey in the Rock repeates in honor of Ella Baker. "We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes." This is the type of up all nights I imagine you having. Isaiah too? Those up all nights that lead to more free mornings. To clarity. To a form of light birthed from the midnight oil burned within. Life sentence punctuated by a preposition. I love the way you share those insights. I love it that when you stay up all night you are wake-dreaming freedom for all of us. I love your passion and your intention and your you-ness.

And so I dedicate this remix poem, based on Audre Lorde's last poem for her son to you. Abundantly brilliant mama, birthing new worlds in every form. Staying up all night for one specific persons benefit some nights. I am honored to share freedom dreams with you. And I love you more than I can say, for the whole time that I am awake.

love always,

Lex

break free (everyday) Gratitude Poem #21

2011-08-29T12:34:00.002-04:00

break free

(everyday)

For Vanessa Huang

After Audre Lorde’s “Parting”

rocks talk through chisel light into break room

passed note to whole note break rest to trill too past to hold

too old to break cooler under river stone too cold to howl

trowel truth break ground refine less lime over more time

ghost right host bit love tongue blood read break skin in

thin wrap loose chase goosebump into break time

mine coal ice cold chase fever break even more hearts

beat fear brave raven heat heaven break o

**************************************************p

*********************************************e

****************************************n

Vanessa Huang is in my corner. Which at the end of the day may be just be enough. I am proud to believe in what Vanessa believes in. I am proud to fight and love for what Vanessa fights and loves for. And a biproduct blessing of the confluence is that I may see Vanessa any given year nationally gathered in a sacred name. Your names are sacred to me Vanessa.

And there is something that you are doing with line-breaks and space that challenges me into breakthrough. How you chisel your life into such truth, clarity and presence is a testament that commands my attention, respect, joy and love.

Thank you so much for being a poet and breakthrough and an ever present possibility.

love always,

lex

p.s. look at these luckiest numbers gathered in my favor to send me home to Audre!!!!! http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Poet (Gratitude Poem #20)

2011-08-28T15:37:00.002-04:00

Poet

For Roberto Tijerina

After Audre Lordes’s “Thanks to Jesse Jackson”

say it like bridge

spell it like splinter

these are the times

when words need carpenters

think out loud reshaping

into places to sit and meet

and walk and not fall through

write it like rice

growing hot and irresistible

undercover in the watched pot of revolution

spell it like cauldron

these are the years

when we eat our words

when the boil-over of desire

is the table we build by sharing

train our tongues to be trans

send ground to the rhythm of meaning

generate light like a helmet

in the mines

like a tread in the sloop

in the loop down of question

this is it

now stalagmite of babel

dark room of reason

inverse of towerful

the time when each word

wake tongue

catch fire to ear

clean throat back to pink

when each word

sears like prophecy on our hearts

this is the moment

we all become

poets.

********

Roberto Tijerina is truly a rockstar who needs no introduction..but since bragging on people in my community is one of my very favorite activities, you should know that Roberto is one of the most amazingly loved organizers I know. He is a beacon, leader, expert and transformer of the practice of translation in the radical intersectional social justice world. Roberto is a person who challenges movements with a depth of understanding about access, privilege and what it takes to center the range of people most impacted by the most virulent forms of oppression in our times in a room, in a conversation, at an event, in a publication, on a website. Everywhere, everywhere.

This is why I wanted to create a poem in conversation with on of Audre Lorde's last poems which was written after a speech by Jesse Jackson that celebrates and emphasizes that the majority of the people in the world are and will be people of color and that majority language of the planet is not English.

Roberto is a person who celebrates and who is celebrated. In our community he is the most positively understood definition of what it is to be a celebrity. And I know for sure that Audre Lorde is somewhere and right here celebrating the fact that Roberto exists and is doing his powerful work, and building infrastructures for aligned work at the impactful scale and in the wholistic way that he does it!

And on a more personal note Roberto, you are a person who I fall in love with everytime I see you..which is altogether not often enough. Thank you so much for supporting me to travel across water and time.

Thank you all for supporting me to travel backwards in hurricane history and forward to love aka Audre Lorde aka Gloria Joseph with a deeper sense of home than I ever knew was possible!!!! Look at this!: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

all love all the time,

Lex

Betta Know (Gratitude Poem #19)

2011-08-26T08:30:00.002-04:00

Betta Know

For Jessica Johnson

After Audre Lorde’s “jessehelms”

we are

black women

writing the future

our way

heel-toe shifting

on the nerve

of discourse

a-town stomping on the pulse

of now

we are

what the pencil skirt sharpening

typist dreamgirls

dare not daydream

we are 12 revolutions a minute

7 hail mary passes to Oya

we are winding we warmfront up

wrapping our fingers around yes

we are drum wake to every silence

gateway for ancestor swallow each

we are biting the handle

that twitterfeeds the treadmill

that runs the solar toaster

we recruit

neon conductors for a railroad in the sky

where Harriet rides shotgun winking

we bring all the names we know

and make up

new ones

we are the zero one

we are the one zero

we are the shero oneness

past binary bright

we are the blaze of phrase

we been waiting for

we are the writing

that needs no wall

only wail

we are the deep sea tracking

drowned womb trail

unmuffled by the wait of words

we are the vain enough

arteries of a truth

that will not be stopped

shopped copped chopped or screwed

except how we accept how

how we protect the neck

of the perfected wreck

how we juggle the jugular

of wanting

we are the by every means

cybernetic pocket freed fist

we are the risk we are the taken

the surly and shaken

we are the liberation lounge singers

here all weak all here regardless

we are black women

writing the future

our way

all day

betta know

this.

********

Jessica and I met each other during a simultaneously selfless and shameless redistribution of criminalized resources at a siddity and striving affair. In St. Louis. That's all I can say and keep you all safe.

Which is a coded way of saying we met on some by any means necessary do it yourself reparations, rewire an existing structure to meet our community building needs type terms. Which feels very appropriate to me. I hope our biographers include that anecdote in all its scandal because to me it sets the stage for everything else. We met in an action that showed our shared values of community over convention and realness over rules.

It is a blessing and a gift to traipse the cyberworld arms looped with a sister-comrade who I know lives the graceful mischief she speaks offline too. Jessica is a space crasher and a space creator, doing the everyday heart work of saying the unsayable and amplifying the forgotten. Prolific, profound, prophetess-historian, I am proud to share a world and steal a stage with you. I love you and everything you love via transformation, information, documentation and creation. There is nothing in the world as priceless as a down ass scholar who knows how to tweak html until it screams like Abbey Lincoln on the Freedom Now Suite. Nothing in the world.

Love you girl!!!!!

And again love to each of you for loving me like you mean it and gifting me with trip of my dreams to visit Gloria Joseph and swim in Audre Lorde's legacy. http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

always,

lex

re:generate: FREE wellness and resilience day-retreat Sept. 3rd, Atlanta, GA

2011-08-24T12:27:00.001-04:00

Saturday, September 3 · 4:00pm - 10:00pm

St. Marks Youth Center

781 Peachtree Street Northeast (accessible by Midtown Marta Station)

Atlanta, GA

Join the Mobile Homecoming Project, Quirky Black Girls and Kindred Southern Healing Justice collective during Atlanta's Black Gay Pride Weekend for a historic day-long retreat designed to build community among Black LBGTQ women of all ages, share self-care, grounding and healing practices and celebrate the power of our LOVE!!!

Highlights:

4:30pm Intergenerational Discussion on Staying Amazing for the Long Haul and Avoiding Burnou...t as Activists, Artists, Healers and Transformative Educators

Ongoing: Delicious self-care booths of all kinds!

Lex sharing new archival miracles of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker's correspondence about survival and cancer and more...

6pm Cooking with our favorite body-loving recipes and eating together!!!

8pm Intergenerational Dance Party with DJ Lynee!

VOLUNTEER:
Have a self-care practice or favorite recipe or dish that you want to share? Email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com!!!

PARTICIPATE in the TAPESTRY OF TRANSFORMATION

*****Participate in our love-filled fundraiser to support this event from Join the Mobile Homecoming Project, Quirky Black Girls and Kindred Southern Healing Justice collective during Atlanta's Black Gay Pride Weekend for a historic day-long retreat designed to build community among Black LBGTQ women of all ages, share self-care, grounding and healing practices and celebrate the power of our LOVE!!!

Highlights:

4:30pm Intergenerational Discussion on Staying Amazing for the Long Haul and Avoiding Burnou...t as Activists, Artists, Healers and Transformative Educators

Ongoing: Delicious self-care booths of all kinds!

Lex sharing new archival miracles of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker's correspondence about survival and cancer and more...

6pm Cooking with our favorite body-loving recipes and eating together!!!

8pm Intergenerational Dance Party with DJ Lynee!

VOLUNTEER:
Have a self-care practice or favorite recipe or dish that you want to share? Email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com!!!

PARTICIPATE in the TAPESTRY OF TRANSFORMATION

*****Participate in our love-filled fundraiser to support this event from near or far! Have the name of a loved one of yours who demonstrates, demonstrated or could use some wellness and resilience energy painted onto a tapestry that will be part of the altar for this healing space! *******

1. go to paypal.com
2. click "send money"
3. send to mobilehomecoming@gmail.com
4. INCLUDE THE NAME OF YOUR LOVED ONE IN THE NOTES SECTION!!

So excited to see you there!!!!!
love,
lex

spin (gratitude poem #18)

2011-08-24T09:47:00.003-04:00

spin

For Meredith

After Audre Lorde’s “The Politics of Addiction”

if we had the glue

to keep on going

over nerves newness

and not knowing how

we are

going

to get home

in the spiderweb of sprawl

we could live anywhere

spinning sincerity

wakes the warmth of dust

shadow of trust

shaped by seeking

this is the collage you make

dancing in place

deepening dervish

glitter-map to presence

spin

*********

Meredith caught a ride across town to glide red-dressed and exuberant into the queer station embryonic hub this weekend, and trusted she would be able to get home. In a time when I am building faith and learning to choose the safety of the transformative universe over the security of control and isolation Meredith is a testament.

I am so happy that Meredith is back in Atlanta, ready to build deep community and to celebrate the abundance of life! You are such a great example!!!

And each of you is evidence that life is abundantly possible! Thank you all for being part of my miraculous journey!!!: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

love,

lex

Found (Gratitude Poem #17)

2011-08-23T16:51:00.003-04:00

The universe blesses us in many ways. And black feminism lives in the trees, in the ground and in the sky, but especially, resplendently in human form. I am happy to live in the quirky world where Sarah walks, teaches and heals. This is a poem based on one of the more intimate and confrontational poems

in Lorde's Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, transformed into a love poem for Sarah as she witnesses the possibility of peace in occupied Palestine. Nothing is impossible. So much love and gratitude to you Sarah, for being you.

And gratitude to each of you for being part of a love fueled journey of black feminist possibility through the sky and every other superhighway of love: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Found

For Sarah Thompson

After Audre Lorde’s “Judith’s Fancy”

Go handclap on a revolution

found sister find space

for truth in the rubble and trouble

of faith

between here

and Sunday

is a road travelled better

off eggshell sweetness

welcome to

the everyday theology

of quirk

the work

of unshirked commitment

to us

to you as

enough us

to bust

a move

past life into love

whirlwind in face

sit childlike

stand dance

in the midst.

Home (Gratitude Poem #16)

2011-08-19T08:09:00.004-04:00

Black Amazon! Warrior of my dreams, beacon of all Audre's dreams coming true! The day we met in person you transubstantiated online alignment instantaneously into love. You recognized me as family, even though it would be years before we actually called out the names of our ancestors and realized that we probably actually are cousins back there. I will say about us what June Jordan said to Audre Lorde:

"You and I hold so much in common. West Indian. Which is to say driven and unreasonably proud and riveted to thousands of pages of thousands of books."

Knowing you is a reason to be proud. It is the best excuse to love myself again. I love you so much Sydette and am so proud to call you sister comrade!!!

Infinite gratitude to Sydette and everyone else who dug deep to support my grassroots dream of flying home to Audre!!! http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Home

For Sydette Harry

After Audre Lorde’s “Women on Trains”

I never see you at home

forest brought

monument to sand

planetary brilliance

I always see you

at home

our truth belies our training

you are a tree

i would stand and fight next to

any time of day

but I would rather

stay up all night laughing

our joy left ransom

for the act right impulse of strangers

your smile is a reminder

this is why we make home

out of hallways

out of half-met promises

out of custom sneakers

and sweets

home is how you move

everything hasn’t

been taken

crown in place

home is how you make

roadside regal

posture bought

by not believing bullshit

home is no

home is know

whose said so

don’t mean squat

in the line of lies

for sale

home is

we can drop a ritual

any time

no space is owned

our most gangster ancestors

show up with us at the door

home is precise

those who act

like they don’t

know

can be recast quick

flash your eyes

fireweed shield around love

to say

do not let your ignorance

make you

expendable

we were put here to survive

we will grow this world in a windowbox

or a toilet

flush to realness

tangled from escape

rooted

before McKenzie

and after and through

growing screams

but is not broken

here

right here

we unleash home.

Decide (Gratitude Poem #16)

2011-08-17T07:49:00.002-04:00

Tema Okun is the angry white woman the founding fathers were scared would come to life, even as they did everything to create the critical, cynical, hopeful, teacher that she is. Present to the contradiction of the moment and choosing like an artist to keep every piece of the contradiction unresolved. As it should be.

Tema's work as a white anti-racist educator and organizer and an anti-Zionist Jewish activist and an erstwhile member of the UBUNTU writing group has been a resource in my life for conversations about Palestine and June Jordan, the structural possibilities of autonomous educational space, the dynamics of fear, classroom exercises, university teaching evaluations, the value of time in the day or night for art, the sound of a new year and more. Together, with their chosen family member artist Ellen O'Grady, Tema and her partner Tom have been providing free, abundant meeting and organizing space in Durham for years...making a home for many Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind and Mobile Homecoming Events including Queer Black Sunday School, James Baldwin's 86th Birthday Party, the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival Rebirth Summer, the MotherOurselves Bootcamp parts of Indigo Days and so many that I can't even list them all.

Tom and Tema also journey to Palestine yearly as part of their solidarity work towards a free Palestine and the just world that would require such freedom. I have learned from watching Tema and Tom in action that space is a crucial resource with infinite possibilities and place is a deep catalyst for accountability. I'm thrilled and grateful to share space and community with Tema and Tom and so excited that they are part of my journey across water to the US colony where Audre Lorde wrote so passionately about imperialism, disaster economics and the teachings of the wind.

If you want to join that journey home check out: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

love,
lex

Decide

For Tema and Tom

After Audre Lorde’s “Domino”

List the names

Gaza

Darfur

Wounded Knee

Grenada

line them up

sages in skylight

carry water

past horizon

carry blood

past identification

carry bone

past bleach and sun

worship backbone

intend neighbors

travel past home

to here

cats know

the full moon means

stay up all night

waiting for something

to be different

and then realize it is you

imagine it is you

wanting to weep

upon reflection

decide

it is you.

Enough (Gratitude Poem #15)

2011-08-16T14:23:00.003-04:00

If you are lucky enough to visit Christy's home you will see hearts everywhere. Photographed collected. Naturally occurring hearts. If you are lucky enough to know Christy you will learn that love is naturally occurring and can be supported and grown and found an cherished. I am proud to be in community with Christy and to have learned so much about love from her graceful example!!!!!

And if you happen to find a heart, carved in a tree, written in sand, in the shape of a leaf....take a picture and send it over. And if you happen to have the ability to send over a donation for my dream trip to follow my heart home to St. Croix into the zone of Audre Lorde rememory and the hospitality of Gloria Joseph join the chip in here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Everyone who donates will get their very own love poem based on one of the poems in Audre Lorde's "Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance."

Hooray!

love,

lex

Enough

For Christy Tronnier

After Audre Lorde’s “Oshun’s Table”

if you go deep enough

and don’t rush

the river floor

is tiled with heart shaped rocks

high enough

stars curve in and meet

wide enough

fruit transforms

seed cradle overlap

herb garden reach out

rice round ripe

patterns left from rain

moon winks

butter melts

toast opens

out the corner of your eye

everything knows your face

love

the proper name

of the spontaneously chosen people

trustworthy brave

fed by your vigil

assembling every bite into ritual

every room into sanctuary

everyday into altar

and you do go

deep

high

wide

enough

for all

of us.

to walk it (Gratitude Poem #15)

2011-08-15T09:42:00.004-04:00

When I met Lamar I was thanking my ancestors. We were speaking on a panel together at the first ever Triangle Black Gay Pride. He had just moved to the area to get his PhD. He was a "yes" out of the corner of my eye, a brother-in-waiting, a bridge to all the other black poet peace petals on the planet. An ancestor worshipper like me.

We celebrated James Baldwin's birthday together, with words and more than words and promptly laced our lives together into time and space traveling non-stop affirmation. I love you Lamar! You amaze and inspire me. And your role in this community of praise, preacher, prophet poets in this community is crucial, and irreplaceable!

And for all the rest of you walking this dusty road of do-it-ourselves legendary status, I am fundraising for a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit St. Croix to re-immerse myself in the spirit of Audre Lorde on the invitation of the amazing Gloria Joseph!!! Every person who donates gets a love poem from me based on one of the poems in Audre Lorde's final published collection of poems The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance.

Join the journey here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

to walk it

For L. Lamar Wilson

After Audre Lorde’s “Dear Joe”

we like our legends

dead

our luminaries weak

enough

to fit between

the lines

but you brother

lilting perfect

flower stem tribute

believe in us so

damn

daily

you

throw dirt on the road

to walk it

you stowaway crawlspace

for love

you crooked crossroads

where gender falls

apart

where midnight grasps the hand

of the mourning and wakes up

walk it

say fuck the pretense

this my name in cursive

dancing across your face

this kiss the cool cheek of essex

faced away from joe still waits for

burning up

this the light sprite of just right

who will pronounce your name love

and then love again

until you learn it

refuge from the name drop sun-tea of striving

you touch ghosts

the way they want

to be

touched

swirl the jangled street

into homecoming

here to recognize

the small place

where skin can meet skin

is infinite

and we might live

but that is no reason to give

and we might die but that is no reason to

stop

you

lean heavy in the drunkening sweep

of shared air

tar thick days restarting

glean caress out of tree branch missing sky

you

dry mud tracks to tears

stretched legion to come back through

heaven lifted to laces

you

dirt road enough

to walk

Daughter Defined (Gratitude Poem #14)

2011-08-12T07:29:00.003-04:00

Greetings Family!

In the times we live in there are so many ways to recognize your tribe. Asha French reached to to me first across the strong connection of mutual black feminist loved ones as a mother. From across the cybernetic clearing I am watching Asha build and nurture given and chosen family in ways that make me believe in black feminism as a daily practice even more. This is for Asha and the tiniest member of the Crunk Feminist Collective, both teaching us so much every second of the day!!!!!

And as I think about defining daughterness (sic) I am again washed over in gratitude for all of you and your support for this step in my journey of chosen daughtering in the legacy of Audre Lorde as a black feminist ancestor and Gloria Joseph as an exemplary elder. Thank you so much for supporting me to accept Gloria Joseph's invitation to go to St. Croix and to build with her and learn more about that part of Audre Lorde's life!!!

I learn so much from writing each of these poems...so for your own dedicated love poem inspired by a poem in Lorde's Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance join the love movement here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Daughter Defined

For Asha French

After Audre Lorde’s “The One Who Got Away”

beyond glamour

wholeness waits

season-all magic

last seen at no matter what

last heard singing life saving lullabies

last known for kissing the future

the bottom of the day will swell

to fit the dreams packed in

beyond what is fair

or combustible

morning will press up at the sun

life smell bright

faith ransom itself home

daughter

is that dangerous word

that silences guilt-mongers

forcefield to bloodhounds

cutting the air out of any selfish sound

daughter is the name

that means you will grow

moonbeams in a windowsill

dig rootcellars into books

float friendships across clearings

she means

look how she possible

anything worth it

jar water miracle

love lining lace

daughter means

whatever happens

yes beyond yes

beyond

yes

Professional (Gratitude Poem #13)

2011-08-11T16:43:00.003-04:00

The first time I spoke to Katie was on the phone. My beloved sister comrade Sydette told me to talk to her "wifey." Witnessing the most beautiful supportive and kick-ass friendship and sharing a loved one with Katie made me feel connected to her and appreciative even before I finally got to meet her in person. We went through some things we probably should not have had to go through in the city of Boston, but the clarity remained. Katie is a person who shows up for the people she loves. And she loves to love people.

I am happy to have a loved one that is so good at BEING a loved one and to live in a world where Katie is showing the planet what love means and that love will prevail!!!!

I love you Katie!!!

And for your own love poem based on Audre Lorde's "Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance" and to support my journey to learn more about the meaning of love from Audre Lorde and the brilliant loving black feminist Gloria Joseph join the journey here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Professional

For Katie Kuhl

After Audre Lorde’s “Do You Remember Laura”

path grows slick with tread

well-read commute to be your word

boroughs and sidewalks align

names provisional

single-minded purpose

to get where you go

to love who you love

like its your first job

and the only one that matters

gather your tools

something soft

something sweet

something that smells really good

first aid for the spirit

stat pack for head and hands on call

i think of you as a professional

in my mind you are in transit

somewhere in the city

on the way

to love

way I see it

that’s all you do

show up in love

show up to start the clock

show up to turn the light on

show up ready to blow up

anything resembling harm

you heal

with the force of sheer determination

a daily clarity

an urgent walk

saying

no matter who hates you

I will love you

more often

count on it

love becomes a regular miracle

dependable continual here

it’s a numerical strategy

endurance

say it matter of fact

nothing can hurt you

for longer than I will love you

when the world forgets what it even meant

by capitalist die fuck of never care

i will still be here holding your hand

reminding you

you fucking rock

you are how I know love wins

sun has nothing

seasons fall out the sky

water dry out into gills on our backwards ribs

asteroid hit

whole thing fall away

and you will still show up

purse filled with something sacred

something soft

something sweet

something that smells really good

genocidal apathy

structural ignorance

and the deadly arrogance of greed

have lost already

they should have got you first

picked you for their team

but they didn’t know what we know

Katie was the guru that trained the care bears

how to open their hearts

Valentine’s day is plagiarized

a co-optation of the ironic element of a 7 point plan

for annual love generation

left on the floor in a daydream

Katie had on the train

they must not know

what we know

but they will soon find out

if it is not love

it cannot last

Katie is on the way.

Through (Gratitude Poem #12)

2011-08-10T07:07:00.004-04:00

Lorde I had to heal myself this morning. Some unexpected expenses for this dream trip, and every conversation I have in my head about scarcity had me off-hilt and scattered for a moment, but then I get present to the abundance of my community's infinite forms of support and I remember that everything is love!

Lorde I had to heal myself this morning. Thank heaven, Black Canada and the internet for Leah Burke.

Leah, you are a healer in my heart telling me to breathe. You are the ready medicine of love exhaled. Indigo ingenuity in every moment. Knowing you is like living on a reservoir of self-made and resurrected black women healing. Knowing you is lamaze breath transubstantiated into music and music transformed back into presence. I learn so much from you. I have felt so held by you, surrounded in your lovingly chosen song choices and playlists that don't be playin' at all when it comes to the sacred work of lifting a spirit. This is how you were with me the entire time I was writing my dissertation, the long afternoons where the best I could do was to dance around the house and scream sometimes. Julia genuflects when I speak your name: "Leah. You know Leah, who made the playlist on Quirky Black Girls..." You are so magical, Moya and I wonder sometimes how much we must have saved up in the quirky karma account to deserve you and your gifts. Thank you for exemplifying the the most crucial piece of information I know for sure right now: love is infinite and many forms of love do many miraculous things, but the love of black women gets us through.

Love you.

Always.

Lex

p.s. For those just now eavesdropping...amazing Black feminist writer, scholar, organizer, and beekeeper Dr. Gloria Joseph has invited me to St. Croix to visit her and to commune with the spirit of Audre Lorde. There is nothing to say but yes. My versions of yes include writing a poem inspired by a poem from Lorde's last published collection "The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance" for every member of my beloved community of support that donates to the dream journey!!!

Learning how to sacrament dollars back into love: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Through

For Leah Burke

After Audre Lorde’s “Party Time”

play the muscled anthem

our dirtiest mamas

thimble tongued

pierce our lungs into home

if we can breathe through this

anything can live

strut past funeral into bloom

lower rents bend hell by brazeness

if we can hear

the Lorde try to tell us

something

try to tell

hell bent Bumpurs real

Lorde speak blue rattle death whisper waking up

if we can hear and breathe and heave and hold this

Lorde she tryna tell us something

secret newspaper blood

blue black ink wrote over

chords stole strung broke

try ta hear it

stitched ragged and roadside

breathe through this

stained kitchen wall

whole hipped hands suspended into swagger

breathe through this

police dog polemic

drum resurrection

like if you could run and sing at the same time

strum tears into weather

don’t stop

that sound that sob

that washes festered sight

breathe through sore throat

scalp evaporate

heat rising wet stepping up

rhythm paid and slayed

wade in grapejuice over heal

who sings

must have heard how to exhale

who sings hooded hallelujah hung

who hear who hear hoot holler

who hear holler whole who home

who heave heat hear who haunt

who happen who hold hit who home

who home who home who home

who who who who who who

shh shh shh shh she home

Lorde know

who she

breathin’ through.

Dance (Gratitude Poem #11)

2011-08-09T07:10:00.002-04:00

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

Such Rainbow (Gratitude Poem #10)

2011-08-08T05:51:00.002-04:00

To my beloved sister comrade, conspirator, co-editor, new-age pen-pal, teacher (did I say sister? did I say comrade?) Mai'a Williams and my sweet cyber god-daughter Aza...how many ways do you make my world brighter? Mai'a and Aza you are my touchstone for revolution, my family on the scene, my lightning rod for what revolutionary mothering looks like as a practice on the scale of the universe, of the weather, of the planetary possibility of love. Rainbows in the desert. Mai'a: our relationship reminds me of the truth, that energy is not limited by space or time (or the legality of skype)! Aza: big-haired-cyber-auntie loves you and black feminism lives!!!

Speaking of energetic miracles...look how a farflung community of loved ones is airlifting an ancestor worshiper home into the arms of Audre Lorde with the sheer power of their faith: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

such rainbow

For Mai’a and Aza

After Audre Lorde’s “Prism”

no such rainbow

light breaks prayer

listening for plague

peals back skype longing

no such hell

no such wake up bell

untrue

there is a prism

crystal walking

revolutionary refract

there is a vision of pink hair

and cheering

girl voices squared in Tahrir

don’t sleep

if you don’t know

you don’t know

how hustle blows wind to

sand cut clarity

how late nights flame artful into home

how moonlit blessings

from silenced gods

make it all possible

we are taking such brightness to bed

dreams to art

we are choosing to clash open in color

glass our wishes into poems

art to dream late in morning

sand moon into glass

sleeptalking prayer

bruised gift of the future

we are holding it in our fists

burnt tribute of realness

we are wearing it on our faces

we are catalyzing sun

we are waking up ready

for such rainbows as this

Lasting (Gratitude Poem #9)

2011-08-06T09:51:00.002-04:00

Family! I feel like I am on the best possible version of "Alexis Pauline Gumbs" this is your life. This is my life!!!! Gratitude overflowing. We have actually reached and exceeded the goal of my chipin fundraiser. Which means my plane ticket to St. Croix to visit Gloria Joseph and re-baptize myself in the legacy of Audre Lorde is paid for!!!!! Yippeee! AND...I would never deny myself the honor of writing a poem for any of you, so if you want to contribute to food and other expenses of the trip feel free to keep chipping in here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Maura Bairley was the first boss I had that made me want to grow up and the first adult I trusted to tell the truth everyday and not be broken by it. When I was some sort of vaguely defined work-study assistant at the Barnard-Columbia Rape Crisis and Anti-Violence Support Center (which Maura helped to found and also to shepherd into its own department complete with a robust brilliant staff and, peer advocates, crisis responders, and full-steam peer education programs that empower people of all genders to make moves to end violence...) I marvelled that someone like Maura could exist, and be happy, and be so nice to me on monday mornings!!!!! Working for Maura also meant being surrounded by posters of Audre Lorde, books by genius feminists of color on a regular basis. Osmosis is real.

One way to say it is this:

Maura actively created holistic structures to end and respond to sexual violence on a campus where I survived sexual assault. Maura has actively nurtured structures for queer black feminist transformation in my communities that I benefit from every single day. Maura has built a model for whole, real, resplendent survival just by living the truth of her own life and letting some of us be witnesses. Maura, you have saved my life over and over again just by living yours.

And here is another way to say it

Lasting

For Maura Bairley

After Audre Lorde’s “Legacy-Hers”

to crack the code of your giving

measured presence daily truth

all at once your unapologetic self

enduring miracle

intro course

on how bright Black women

stay survive

and whole

i showed up

to study you with awe

a stark believer

stumbling half grace

at twice pace

to seek rest in holy war

to learn you by immersion

watch you cherish crossfire path

deep and marked with slender bones

hear you breathe a structure of tears

into undrained heroism

neat next steps

feel you conjure peace in uncalm air

unflinching at terrible

having known something worse

believing in so much better

must be there was some slow and sacred music

you could hear

centered in collusion

clear ancestral chorus

lifting you into the most urgent now

unrushed clarity

making space

to you it was just showing up

to me it was the proof that life was livable

the proof that we would win

what I didn’t know

i needed

to keep

being

the gift

not being first

and lasting.

What It Means (Gratitude Poem #8)

2011-08-05T07:10:00.002-04:00

Dear Family,
These poems are supposed to be gifts for you, but they are such gifts to me. Thank you for the miraculous opportunity to be present to the radiant truth that I am surrounded by abundant brilliance and priceless people!!!
This poem is for Mecca Jamilah Sullivan who I see not at all often enough, but who I am always present to as a fellow traveler. Before we ever met our friends in common (especially La Marr Jurelle Bruce) KNEW that we should know each other. Ours is a relationship like that of many sister-comrades in conversation across wide space, but with such affirming proximity of spirit! And so it is an honor to dedicate this poem, inspired by one of Audre Lorde's several poems to her sister-comrade Pat Parker, to the great writer, scholar, performer, activist, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan!

And guess what! We are 86% of the way to our goal. If you want to join the chorus of angels that is affirming this blessing of a trip to visit Gloria Joseph in St. Croix and commune with the spirit of Audre Lorde and to be near a beach for two much needed weeks chip in here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

For Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

After Audre Lorde’s “Girlfriend”

read your cybernetic name

like air traffic neon

landing stripped to faith

a way home in the dark

taken * delicious

just plain right

need to know

that all year long

another presses pencil to bone

pushes black keys to re-cord chords

otherwise forgotten

badly madly radly

in it

spirit in flight

let’s make a phone book

a hotline

for those of us who know

this is what it means to live

forever

silence pregnant born again to witness

beloved voices haunting into word.

breathe (gratitude poem #7)

2011-08-04T10:16:00.002-04:00

Greetings Family!
Seven is a blessed number and I am SO blessed to have the love of my sister-comrade Adele Nieves in my life. We have created dances in honor of each other, traveled highways and the internet to witness each other's brilliance and NOW I am so proud that she is immersing herself in an amazing journey to continue to deepen her work as a healer in our community informed by indigenous traditions that have been suppressed and with accountability to our whole beloved community. Adele is like a lightening rod to transformation. I feel everything she learns impacting the world immediately!!!! Send Adele blessings for focus, clarity and sustainable inspiration as she engages in what I would describe as deep delicious healer bootcamp university!

And if you want to join Adele in helping with my dream-come-true trip to meet Gloria Joseph and get your own love poem based on Audre Lorde's Marvelous Arithmetic of Distance chip in at: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

breathe

For Adele

After Audre Lorde’s “The Night-Blooming Jasmine”

star breathing
water blooming
you are a flute song
seducing form to transform
itself

walk searoad
baptize baskets
veinwave powersurge
to reiki ringing hands

sunmade staccato
there are no strangers
can be no enemies
each challenge
unequal to bright embrace

chisel truth in sand
where the only way to walk
is to know for sure
to remember through the center of your days

sweet need known
flower flown
winged work working it out

if they couldn’t tell
now they know they know
the world gets baptized
when you get saved

breathe stars
bloom water
sing sun

Circle (Gratitude Poem #6)

2011-08-03T10:08:00.002-04:00

Family!
Vanessa Jackson is a person who shapes herself into sunshine, sweetening her purpose by creatively contributing to everything she believes in. I have benefited from Vanessa's belief in abundance enough to know that while many people give gifts, Vanessa at this stage, IS a gift to our community and our ancestors. I am so grateful to be living in a world that Vanessa claims as sacred! Today celebrating the launch of Vanessa's Full Circle: A Woman's Return to HerSelf program, I offer this poem.

For any of you other glorious gifts out there looking to sweeten purpose into love by supporting my journey to visit Gloria Joseph and commune with Audre Lorde and getting your own dedicated poem...join the love circle here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Circle

For Vanessa Jackson’s Return to HerSelf

After Audre Lorde’s “Construction”

sky rebirth sound

wake you up walk

face full with signs

sign for sistering

stand forever

sign for seeing

full days fertile

silence reborn

into sound

the sky

of your sweet soul

listens

signposts to heal

soothseek

spirit as salve

sky sounds like you

waking walking

healing holding

life as loving

and then doing it again

therefore

if we build our present

out of gifts like you

truth resounds

forever.

To Be Brown (Gratitude Poem #5)

2011-08-02T09:06:00.002-04:00

It is an honor to write a poem for my soul brother Darnell Moore whose donation put us over the 50% mark in my lovefilled fundraising for my dream trip to St. Croix to visit Gloria Joseph and reconnect across water, time and plane with the spirit of Audre Lorde! It's even more exciting because Darnell too is on a dream journey having just recently purchased his tickets for a collective funded and black feminist ancestor mandated solidarity journey to Palestine. I love being spirit siblings with you Darnell!!! May we always support and affirm each other in the work of making our ancestors proud!

If you want to support the journey and get your own dedicated poem inspired by one of Audre Lorde's poems in The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance check out my fundraising page at

http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

love,

lex

To Be Brown

For Darnell Moore

After Audre Lorde’s “Thaw”

we season language

into sweet potatoes

deep heavy whole

with so many rooted eyes

we reason lust

into underground

unbroken something else

always saying reach

all around us

worlds are cracking

shells are breaking

birth is calling out our name

down here we grow

syllable by syllable

digging affirmation

watering prayer to

ancestor mud

you and me brother

we know

who the ground will wake

into all our green belief

when the sky will recognize

our measured blues

how the people will dance

into heat shaped light

you and me brother

we remember why

and

what a bright thing it is

to be brown.

Gratitude Poem #4

2011-07-29T06:45:00.003-04:00

Beautiful ones!!!

Daily gratitude is growing my soul! It is an honor to write a poem for Jeter a visionary example who has blessed my life ever since the start of the Mobile Homecoming Project and taught me that we can truly choose our family and watch them emerge! Thanks so much for supporting my dream trip home to Audre! And anyone else who wants to chip can jump on here: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

For (Debra Renee) Jeter

After Audre Lorde’s “Syracuse Airport”

I hear

women from California

need no secrets

just clean drawers

to hold new knowing

I hear

the sun-ready intergalactic

among us know

what one and one makes

in the time of what looks like

too much

she who knows her joy

will find it every day

no matter who

is watching

Saying (Gratitude Poem #3)

2011-07-28T11:06:00.007-04:00

Goodness daily!
It is such an honor and pleasure to have an excuse write a poem of long due gratitude to an exemplar in my life, who saw a community organizing accountable writer in me when I was just a straight-haired-platform-shoe-wearing-confused-self-righteous teenage so and so. Kavi I adore you!!! Thanks so much for contributing to my dream trip to Audre.

Anyone else who wants to chip in can check out: http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip

Saying

for Kavita Rajanna

After Audre Lorde's "Building"

Kavi has permission
to roam the earth
to charge the air
with the sit down
of revolution
is not often taken
for local
at home

Kavi gives permission
to the fly and fearful
the restless and the rest
to remember
it is not that serious
it is exactly serious enough
to sit down
stay home
and dig in
for the revolution

Kavi places deep roots
and billboard blasphemy
without permission
vein strung seriousness
free of vanity
is taken
with the local
lifelong levity
of being
revolution.

Kavi on a mission
is a decolonial wheatpaste
and a heartfilled breakfast
and a reading suggestion
and the clarity of context
and a way worth walking behind
and a truth worth tracking
and is fiercely local
and is here
wherever here is
which is home.

Just saying.

Sunlight (Gratitude Poem #2)

2011-07-27T09:19:00.002-04:00

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

Gratitude Poem #1

2011-07-26T07:23:00.003-04:00

Greetings Family!

I am overjoyed to have been invited by brilliant Black Feminist Dr. Gloria Joseph to visit her in St. Croix and to commune with the spirit of my chosen ancestor Audre Lorde. I am inviting my whole community to contribute to my dream trip (http://alexispauline.chipin.com/praise-the-lorde-st-croix-dream-trip) and I have committed to write a poem inspired by Audre Lorde's The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance for each contributor.

It is fitting and humbling that the very first person to contribute to my dream trip to visit Gloria Joseph in St. Croix is a person who started to read Audre Lorde the same time as me, back when we were teenagers looking. Someone who has known my poetry almost as long as I have, and who is also one of my favorite writers.

There is neither the first poem, nor the last poem by Alexis Pauline Gumbs for Elizabeth Rose Anderson. There is a special challenge in writing a poem for someone who for whom my poetry has no novelty anymore. :) So bullshit-free...this is for you WMCR:

For Elizabeth

After “Echoes” by Audre Lorde

There is a tinge of certainty

it comes from being heard

being known over time

it comes from not having to say

my scream is the same as my silence some days.

The grave is not still

it is choice

it is where our ancestors roll over

to hear a conversation that don’t stop

it is listening beyond escape

it is the decided irrelevance of distance.

So now in the time where future unravels

where promise tattoos

into long-held dreams coming true so fast

we heal doubt kill fear

rebirth those who said our blood was glitter

our truth was optional who said

it was our youth had fooled us into possible

There is a dirt root depth of voice

that comes from saying what

I do not need to say to you

who know and knew

we were always possible

we are proof

we are here

-Alexis Pauline Gumbs (July 26, 2011)

Announcing Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators August 8-12 in Durham, NC!

2011-06-23T09:06:00.005-04:00

Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive for Educators:

Rituals for Transformative Presence

August 8-12, 2011

Durham, NC

because you were that genius kid in the back of the room looking out the window. because you were that young Malcolm X that the teacher wasn't ready for. because you were that Charlotte Hawkins Brown making your own school in yards and parlors. because you have always known that where ever you are learning is possible. because you don't remember much of 10th grade biology except that the teacher seemed to really listen to really make it accessible even when you didn't care. because there was something that happened in the classroom that made you want to come back and fix it, come back and honor it, come back and create a classroom of your own. because you are here for the kids, not for the standards and obviously not for the money. because you remember every day that people's movement in the US and in the world have been led by students. because you know that the place where nerds meet gang members is the place where the Black Panther Party was born, and that meeting could be reconvened in any classroom any day now. because it's still about that moment when you learn something new and the students realize that they are teachers already, and leaders and a force in the universe that cannot be stopped.

Because your presence is a catalyst, because your students are a prophecy. Because June Jordan said it best... "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

The Premise:

Every social justice artist and genius and their brilliant mama is publishing a curriculum, hoping to reach the students you work with, without ever seeing their faces. And sometimes the content is brilliant. But most educational institutions, including public schools, after school programs, independent schools, community colleges and four-year colleges and graduate programs already have their own mandatory or chosen content. So...

This course acknowledges what has the most influence on students while they are in the classroom, the people who are there, the educators and each other and the energy we are all empowered to bring into the space.

This course offers:

*Silence (templates for self-generated, updateable affirmations and reminders designed to get you ready to be powerfully present and spiritually grounded before you enter the classroom)

*Sound (ways to fine tune and amplify your level of listening and responding to/being present for your particular students)

*Space (a process for designing guidelines and rituals that allow students to be present to EACH OTHER and the wisdom that surrounds them)

*Support (co-mentoring relationships and networking with other transformative teachers)

The Paradigm:

Juneteenth Freedom Academy is created in honor of the black feminist educator, poet, parent and political activist June Jordan. We invoke her work as part of our task in continuing to spread the scattered message that slavery is over, in particular to those systems that continue to sell life and kill dreams. We believe that teaching in oppressed communities with accountability to oppressed people can be a subversive act that is ultimately accountable to freedom, not the reproduction of conformity as usual across generations. June Jordan taught in public libraries and schools, in independent underfunded Saturday supplemental programs, in state university classrooms, at Yale, in prisons, in community centers, in children's books, in lectures and in living rooms. The Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators draws on Alexis's privileged access to June Jordan's archival materials to use her syllabi, unpublished essays, course readers and student publications as resources for freedom in our lifetimes.

My brilliant and beloved co-conspirator and teaching partner Gardy Perard speaks with the clarity and precision of a mathematician. He says that the primary question for educators is how to bring freedom, possibility, power and connection into every teaching context. Together with Nia Wilson, Nikki Brown, Heather Lee and Zachari Curtis as co-facilitators of the Choosing Sides Program, a SpiritHouse program based in an alternative school in Durham serving students who were long-term suspended or expelled from Durham Public Schools, often for activities related to their involvement in street organizations, we created a student centered atmosphere of transformation and learning based on our internalized memory that the place where academics meet criminalized street organizers is a place of unstoppable power, is the generative collaboration that made the Black Panther one of the fiercest, most effective and most revolutionary organizations we know about.

Our accountability to the particularity and genius of the students that we worked with over the years pushed us to create practices to honor the truth that transformative education is not about transforming students. It is about being present for their inherent brilliance and assisting them in transforming their and our relationships to oppressive institutions. This is sacred work. Because most of our teaching takes place in places impacted by oppressive systems, and because we and any student we might encounter are impacted by oppressive institutions the work of creating liberatory space takes rituals and practices before, during and after the classroom encounter that generate the transformative energy of staying present to each other's brilliance no matter what.

Supportive Course Components:

*weeklong summer institute in Durham, NC to work with templates, practices and to engage readings from June Jordan, the Black Panther Party, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs! (August 8-12)

*full color PDF workbook with posters, pocket reminders and accessories

*first month back interactive and motivating conference calls (August 25-September 25)

*video seminar to share with colleagues

*quarterly optional online-enabled participant hosted gatherings

*the presence podcast and reminder PSA's from Alexis

Sign Up:

1. email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com BY JULY 20th with your intention to participate and responses to these 3 questions

a. what is the community of students you are accountable to/working with

b. what do you hope to gain from this course

c. what is every possible way to contact you :)

d. how you will support the course

2. Support the course!!!

Support the Course!!!

Your presence is priceless. No one will be turned away from the course for financial reasons. HOWEVER support for the course is crucial. Here are suggested ways to support your participation and to keep transformative autonomous spaces like this thriving:

*Please ask your school, organization, institution, employer, community to support your participation in this priceless experience. The institutional sponsor rate is sliding scale $200-500 depending on your assessment of what your institution can afford.

*Another option is to support the course individually in relatively affordable installments. Become a sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind at a level you feel comfortable with:

*Mobilize your community! Take the opportunity to share the awesome thing you are doing with your mentors, friends, loved ones and allies and allow them to donate in your name. Send them this button and remind them to put your name in "notes" so that I can tell you to thank them!

*And offer a trade! Want to bring other resources to the event? (Food, materials, healing practices, resources I haven't imagined?) Make a proposal.

See you there!!!!!

Love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Indigo Days Podcast: Sacred Black Feminist Blues

2011-06-18T06:17:00.001-04:00

Greetings loved ones,

Indigo Days a transformative gathering of warrior healers came to close this past Thursday. But the impact of warrior healers is ETERNAL so of course the impact of Indigo...Ntozake Shange's visionary creation and of the work of black warrior healers does not end. For all of you who attended Indigo Days and blessed the space with your transformative love, and all those who wished they could have been there in body as well as spirit and all those who supported with food, transportation, space, donations and materials this brilliant podcast...created by the resident blues scholars and DJ of the Quirky Black Girls Movement is for YOU!!!!

Enjoy!!!!

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bbs-podcast.mp3]

Direct Link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bbs-podcast.mp3

P.S. If you'd like to be part of the Indigo Days Conversation...post your brilliance here:

http://blueblackblessing.tumblr.com/submit

If you'd like to support the ongoing sacred work of eternal summer of the black feminist mind (including the Indigo Night School coming this Fall!!!) donate one time here:

or on a monthly basis at a rate that makes sense to you!

Indigo Days!!! Black Warrior Healers Unite!!!!

2011-06-08T07:20:00.002-04:00

Black warrior healers unite and be reborn! The world will never be the same.

Non-financial and financial contributions welcome!

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Thursday June 9th

10am BREAKFAST (the Eleanor at Rigsbee)

10:30-1pm The P-Word and Other Fragile Promises: Movement and Poetics with Aya Hope (the Eleanor at Risgbee)

1pm LUNCH

3-5pm Open Healing Sessions and Stations (Eleanor at Rigsbee)

5:30pm DINNER

6pm Bright: On Clarity and Power Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survivor Writing Workshop (the Eleanor at Rigsbee)

(more info about the ShapeShifter Survivor series here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/survival-school/)

******************************

Friday June 10th

BREAKFAST

8am Waking Up-Cultivating breath, awareness, and embodiment -Yoga with Michelle Johnson (Inspiration Station)

10am Assata graduates from Elementary School!!! (Chorus of praise at E.K. Powe Elementary School Graduation)

LUNCH (discussion topic: rituals and rites of passage)

1pm -3pm Energy Healing Workshop with CC (Inspiration Station)

3pm Journal Making with designer Mariel Eaves (the Eleanor at Rigsbee)

5pm-7pm graduation celebration for our young Indigos Assata and Naeemah!!!!!

DINNER

8pm The Power of Saying No!: A Playlist and Dance Party of Release: Afterparty curated by Moya Bailey (location TBA)

**************************************

Saturday June 11th

BREAKFAST (discussion topic: birth and rebirth: beyond control)

10am Black Women Birthing Resistance Workshop on Indigo and Cotton Root Contraceptive Legacies with Tamika Middleton (Inspiration Station)

LUNCH (discussion topic: fight and flight: re-envisioning survival)

1pm "Embodying Sanctuary: Creating, Holding and Facilitating Sacred Space" with L'erin Asantewa

3pm Wata' Rituals Body Ecology Performance and Workshop (Grace Garden at Durham Central Park)

DINNER (discussion topic: Do You Really Want to Be Well?)

7pm Afro-Surrealist Dark Delicious Divinatory Writing Workshop with Almah Lavon Rice

9pm Optional field trip to Greensboro for Laila Nur's EP release party!!!

***************************************

Sunday June 12th

BREAKFAST (discussion prompt: audre lorde and dream journals)

10: 30 am Activate Your Dreams: Creative Movement/Dance Session with Binahkaye Joy aka Joyism! (Inspiration Station)

12pm -I Know I’ve Been Changed: Queer Black Sunday School with Julia Wallace (Inspiration Station)

BRUNCH

2pm Blues Porch Concert with Laila Nur and Kim Arrington (Inspiration Station)

DINNER (Sunday Dinner...Lex's B-day community potluck!) (Inspiration Station)

7pm Blues Bible Study: Sacred and Secular Healing Podcast with Leah Burke (Inspiration Station)

*****************************************

Monday June 13th

10 am Yoga with Michele Berger

BRUNCH

1pm “Feeling-up Your Emotional Body”- Learning the Sounds and Organs of Emotion with Valencia Wombone

4pm Marvelous Menstruating Moments Workshop with Mya Hunter-SpiritHouse Youth Coordinator (for kids and young people getting ready to menstruate) (Inspiration Station)

DINNER at the Summit Farm!!!!

6pm Collaging as a Healing Practice with Rashida James-Saadiya (location TBA)

*********************************************

Tuesday June 14th

LUNCH

River Walk at Eno River Park

DINNER
5-8pm Lavender Legacies Workshop: Remembering Herbal Remedies (with Kifu Faruq and Afiya Carter)

************************************************

Wednesday June 15th

LUNCH

(full moon) 1pm Butterflies and Bliss with Racheal Derello (North Carolina Museum of Life and Science)

6pm Natural Hair Playdate with Chanel Laguna (Lex's Awesome New Neighbor!!!!) (at the Inspiration Station)

DINNER in Hillsborough and Indigo Seed Starting!

**************************************************

Thursday June 16th

BREAKFAST

LUNCH

Trip to North Carolina Botanical Gardens (Wild Spiked Indigo is their wildflower of the year!!!!)

DINNER

6pm Gentle: On Cultivating Self Love: Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survivor Session

This Thursday 6/2 at 6pm Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer Begins!!!!

2011-05-31T13:30:00.000-04:00

Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School Summer Session 2011!!!!

Thursdays in June

6pm at 204 Rigsbee Ave. #201 in Durham, NC

In honor of the great poet Lucille Clifton, who was also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a mother, an artist and self-identified Amazon warrior through her poetry, the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School is especially designed for families that are committed to ending childhood sexual abuse and all forms of gendered violence. Informed by Generation 5 and the regional plan of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative, the ShapeShifter Survival School is part of a holistic process of ending child sexual abuse by creating healing community.

Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer

2011

F0r 5 Thursdays in Lucille Clifton's birth month of June we will gather as survivors of child sexual and physical abuse and sexual violence and parents and caretakers committed to ending cycles of abuse in our families and communities to do writing activities based on Lucille Clifton's poetry and the ShapeShifter Survivor Rebirth Broadcast video series. (See videos here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/category/shapeshifting/). Participants in the series will also receive digital mixes of the music we work with to create a sacred space of memory. We can use the digital music mixes at home to activate memories of safety from the group writing space.

Rebirth Summer Thursdays:

Thursday. June 2

Unapologetic: Reclaiming Our Memories and Voices

Thursday, June 9

Bright: On Clarity and Power

Thursday, June 16

Gentle: On Cultivating Self-Love

Thursday, June 23

Futuristic: Towards the World that We Deserve

Thursday, June 30th

Planetary: The Depth and Urgency of Our Healing

For Gil

2011-05-29T20:06:00.003-04:00

(almost a gigan for gil scott heron)

we cannot write a eulogy for you
period becomes ellipsis

like battered prophecy in vein
tomorrow claws our collective back
monkey knocks teeth forward holes

soul on shiver smack on cage
choke hold every stolen page

rage to proof that lines do make us bleed
and you were in our heartbeats all along

slice the forearm skin right off the news
we cannot write this eulogy for you

soul on shiver smack on cage
you steal the present into final stage
we memorize your face a fading blue

and we would quit, breathe water, heal for you
but you remain to make us beg the task

be

last

by alexis pauline gumbs

Happy Birthday Sakia Gunn!: A Podcast Celebration

2011-05-26T06:21:00.001-04:00

Start your day celebrating the unstoppable, unkillable, unforgetable power of BLACK QUEER YOUTH! Today would be Sakia Gunn's 23rd Birthday and SO in a special Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind/SpiritHouse collaboration and as part of our ongoing leadership development project 18 year old visionary Matthias Pressley and yours truly (Sista Docta Lex) collaborated to create this podcast celebrating the life and legacy of Sakia Gunn. We love you forever Sakia!!!

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakia-gunn-birthday-podcast-1.mp3]

Direct link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakia-gunn-birthday-podcast-1.mp3

Want to see a whole album of pictures of us making the podcast and exuberantly celebrating Sakia?

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.894854362522.2423816.103868&l=a798c6bb5a

Want to donate to the ongoing leadership building collaboration between Eternal Summer and SpiritHouse?

Donate one time:

Or sustain:

Don't Have to Do Nothing: Be Free (and still) Be Loved

2011-05-18T08:20:00.003-04:00

Y'all. Don't get sick of Lucille Clifton on my account but I swear she just don't run out of brilliant life-saving gifts. So here is another one. In 1985 in the special 15th anniversary issue of Essence Magazine coordinated by Cheryll Y. Greene, Clifton wrote about the true freedom that women can give to each other: "to fail and not be a failure."

When Lucille Clifton, who stunned audiences with the stark clarity of her poetry from countless stages during her lifetime, was a little girl assigned to recite a poem for the Christmas program at her church, she choked. It was not foreshadowing, it was formative. As she stood unable to remember the poem in front of all the church mothers encouraging her and expecting her to perform her mother stood up for her. She felt pressured. She said "I don't wanna." And her mother stood up in front of God and everybody and smiled at her child and she said one small sentence that changes the meaning of life for black girls growing up in patriarchy and capitalism: "She don't have to do nothing she don't want to do."

Can you imagine? Decades later when we were celebrating Lucille Clifton's birthday with her (we didn't know it would be her last) at the Furious Flower poetry center all of us black feminist poets, teachers, daughters gushed with open jealousy at the power and freedom of that statement. Imagine! She don't have to do nothing she don't want to do. So many negatives adding up to the positive clarity that black girls are inherently valuable, love-able, period. When had someone ever stood up and said that for us? When in a world of forced labor, coerced sex, billions of expectations? When had anyone even dared to suggest that we were not valuable because of what we produced, what we created, who we entertained, how well we pretended to be happy? When had we said it for ourselves? don't have to do nothing.

Now I was raised to know that I only have to do two things: stay black, and live. But my interpretation of "stay black and live" has been contorted by internalized capitalism and a system that still judges me based on what my being produces for the market. The refrain that I thought was my heartbeat said "do something do something do something do something" interrupting any stillness with the imperative to produce, to prove, to perform. But here comes Lucille Clifton's mother: she don't have to do nothing.

And how much do we crave that freedom... in the eyes of black people we love who want us to perform blackness in a way that they can more easily consume, in the eyes of non-black people who want the same thing, in the faces of well meaning would be mentors who think we will only be happy with ourselves if we do it their way, in reflections we catch of ourselves in windows thinking we look lost because there is no name for where we are going.

And so today. I need Lucille Clifton's mother, audacious and willing to stand up in front of anyone and say you do not need to stand on a stage to honor God. You do not need to say or do anything in order to be a reflection of divine love. You already are. Even in a puddle at the foot of your bed you are already supreme beautiful unlikely priceless example of the abundance of life. And you know what? Life if so abundant that it places refractions of that same brilliance in all of us, and so there is no need to do it all, there is no need to own brilliance, there is no need to prove and show and compete because life is so abundant that it happens in our honor even when we don't wake up and make it happen.

Who knew Lucille Clifton's mama circa 1940 was an anti-capitalist? Because capitalism would have us believe that we only deserve to be here because of what we produce, and even in our counter-cultures, even in our movements we reproduce the same idea. We only deserve to be here because of what we can produce that other people will buy with their money, time or attention. Our experience of our own lives is secondary, it is only the means of production, it is the products that matter, and unless we make ourselves into both factories and widgets we are not valuable. We believe that. I know I push myself past that belief about every hour on the hour. One of the major lessons of the Mobile Homecoming Experiential Archive Project has been that because of the steep lean (and lien) of capitalism on even our visionary hearts the tendency is to emphasize the documentary film, the photographs, the podcasts, the archived interviews, the presentations...the products over the experience, the priceless opportunity to be present with each other, which is not for sale. Which documents can only gesture towards. Which cannot be sold.

But luckily Lucille Clifton listened to her momma and told us what she said. We can be free and still be loved. We can be still and still be a movement. We are not failures even when we fail. We are life. Miraculous irregardless.

Maybe we can institute Lucille Clifton's mama moments for ourselves and for each other. Maybe we can step in and affirm each other just because. Maybe we can stand up for each other when even our own communities say to us how dare you not be superwoman every second of the day. Maybe we can save the day in our own way in our own language. Nuh-uh. She don't have to do nothing she don't want to do. She don't have to do nothing. And she is still fierce fly and worth of all praise. All of it.

So here is a spare one for each one of you in the time when no one is there to say it, remember that I already said it: you don't have to do nothing to earn my love. nothing to earn all the blessings of the universe. nothing to earn a symphony in ever pore of your skin playing the song of you. nothing to deserve my deepest gratitude for your existence. nothing to earn a place in my heart that you can always come home to. nothing. you already have it. all praise. you have everything.

love always and already,
QBG Lex

P.S. Get ready for a summer filled with opportunities to see the faces of those of us who will scream at the sight of you and open our arms:

*TONIGHT: Young Black Gift: A Birthday Toast to Lorraine Hansberry (@ the Inspiration Station in Durham)
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=145740925499014

*Sunday May 22nd 5pm (@ the Inspiration Station in Durham) Rainbow Reclamations: (Blue) Once I Was Pregnant: Abortion, Miscarriage and Rebirth
http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/blue-once-i-was-pregnant-sharing-stories-of-miscarriage-abortion-and-rebirth/

*Friday, May 27th (@ the Rush Center in Atlanta) THE GEMINI JAM/FIST PUMP FRIDAY featuring a performance by the LOST BOIS, gemini juice and dancing all night long!
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=215303695165893

*June 9-15 INDIGO DAYS in Durham, NC
http://indigodays.wordpress.com/

*June 23-26 ALLIED MEDIA CONFERENCE in Detroit (featuring the Shawty got Skillshare, the Generations of Brilliance Track and the Visionary Sci-Fi Track)
http://alliedmedia.org/

*Thursdays in June 6pm (@ the Eleanor on Rigsbee in Durham) Lucille Clifton Shapeshifter Sessions: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/announcing-lucille-clifton-shapeshifter-survival-school-summer-session-2012/

*August 15-19th Juneteenth Freedom Academy Week-long Intensive: Rituals for Educators

*September 1-4th Queerky Black Girls, Mobile Homecoming and ZAMI NOBLA Black Gay Pride Healing and Connection Retreat!!!

Heat, Light, and Rebirth: On Resurrection

2011-04-26T11:16:00.001-04:00

"Learn to accept love fully and to express love completely. Do nothing while doing everything. Self-care is paramount in self-empowerment. Remember who you are. Remember who you were. Remember what you must do. Do it!"
-a scroll from Black feminist same gender loving feminist spiritual leader and activist, Ifalade Ta'Shia Asanti

This Sunday after an epically bright Saturday full of cars overheating, corner preaching, gas station parking lots, auto part stores and street mechanics who would probably be surgeons in a different ecological manifestation...Julia spent Sunday getting resurrected with the sisters, aunties, mothers, gender queer uncles and brothers of the Shades Retreat in Pine Mountain Georgia. As a hymn that I have recently appropriated for the spiritual practice of black feminist self/collective/multiversal transformation says, "I Know I've Been Changed." So I want to testify, to the heat, the light and the tangible power of sacred space created by our love for ourselves and each other.

The recognition and faith in each others faces is the space that we would go through hell to get to . Pay for in countless paypal installments whenever we can, keep like a light in the center of our foreheads to remind us where we are going on hard days. We are the heaven we know about.
I want to testify that the presence of black feminist transformers of different ages and approaches is a sacred invitation to the revelation of the universe, a call for love to show up and show OUT!

With huge congratulations to Kat Williams and the Shades Retreat organizing crew....some quirky black dreamers if ever there were any, I want to give thanks for US. For the community that saves my life everyday. For the true context for eternal life. For our love.

In the year since the first annual Shades Retreat, Julia and I have visited and interviewed several of the amazing women that we met for the first time in an unassuming cabin in a not at all famous state park in Georgia we have been to their homes and met their communities. We have been able to act on and witness our belief that family is made out of the choice to take risks for each other, to believe in each other more than we believe what we have been taught is practical. We have become unstoppable, made it across the country and come back.

I know I've been changed. Because my soul gets renewed when you speak my name.

This year I have asked for help more times than in the rest of my lifetime added up. I have become a person who dances on purpose, and daily, and in public and without shame. I have become a person who prostrates on the floor greeting elders. I have become a chosen daughter and granddaughter over and over again. I have become a person who is emotionally available. I have become a person who actually takes days off (UNIMAGINABLE!), who can be still and present. I am now a person who is less and less afraid of being known as who I am. I have begun to expect you to love me anyway. Any way. I have begun to walk the unconditional.

I am grateful for the holy space that we create when we are together. And I am so humbled and honored to live in the sacred, divinely possible, miraculous space of your heart and your mind, and your recognition and your reflection. Loving you has invited me to love myself better than I ever woulda known to. I accept your love fully. I commit to expressing my love completely.

Oh what a joy. To wake up and be reborn. With you.

Love always and all days,
QBG Lex

P.S. QBG Updates!

Creating Sacred Transformative Space Online!

Dedicated: The Black Feminist Request Line of the Future!

Ask Sista Docta Love (aka Lex) a question or make a dedication via http://blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com/ask

Come Correct: Because Black Feminist Sex is the BEST Sex Ever!!!

http://bettacomecorrect.tumblr.com/

Submit your sexy brilliance or ask questions at Come Correct...the hottest tumblr ever if we do say so ourselves :)

And follow QBG on our new Tumblr site: http://quirkyblackgirls.tumblr.com/

And for sacred space IN PERSON save the dates for some amazing and mostly FREE chances to be together

May:
Towards an Intellectual History of Black Women: An International Conference
April 28-30th at Columbia University in New York City (Lex is speaking about blood, water, land and love between black women in the US, Haiti and South Africa on Friday morning at 11am!)
Register for free here: http://www.iraas.org/node/203

Everyday Brilliance: Resilience Practices from Black LGBTQ Elders
May 15th, 2pm Stone House 6602 Nicks Rd Mebane, North Carolina
email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com for more info
(http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/may-15-everyday-brilliance-resilience-practices-from-black-lesbian-elders/)

Rainbow Reclamations: Blue-"Once I Was Pregnant" (a discussion ritual for women of color and genderqueer people of color based on Ntozake Shange's choreopoem "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf")
May 22 in Durham, NC place to be announced
for more info email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com and see http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/lavender-rainbow-reclamations-2-love-between-us-beyond-competition-and-sacrcity/

THE 6th Annual Gemini Jam: Friday May 27th in Atlanta, GA (memorial day weekend) Celebrate with some of your favorite Queerky Black Geminis AND listen to our beloved QBG hip hip duo The Lost Bois!!!!!! We are so excited! Save the date and be in the place!
Place to be confirmed soon, to get more info or to put your name on the reminder list email quirkyblackgirls@gmail.com

June

Indigo Days: A Gathering for Black Warrior Healers (June 9-15 in Durham, NC) a free grassroots gathering, housing, childcare and food provided! For more details see: www.indigodays.wordpress.com

Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Revival Summer (Every Thursday in June at 6pm at 204 Rigsbee St. in Durham, NC) F0r 5 Thursdays in Lucille Clifton’s birth month of June we will gather as survivors of child sexual and physical abuse and sexual violence and parents and caretakers committed to ending cycles of abuse in our families and communities to do writing activities based on Lucille Clifton’s poetry and the ShapeShifter Survivor Rebirth Broadcast video series.
For more info see: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/announcing-lucille-clifton-shapeshifter-survival-school-summer-session-2012/
or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

The Allied Media Conference June 23-26th at Wayne State University, Detroit Michigan! Quirky Black Convergence. Enjoy the Women of Color Skillshare, the Mobilehomecoming Elders Track and SO much more!!!! For more info and to register (see alliedmedia.org)

August
Educators save the date for the Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive: Rituals for Classroom Presence. This is a week-long gathering especially for transformative educators. August 15-19th in Durham, NC!!!!!! email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for more info!!!!

May 15: Everyday Brilliance: Resilience Practices from Black Lesbian Elders

2011-04-22T15:38:00.002-04:00

brought to you by the MobileHomecoming Project (mobilehomecoming.org)

amplifying generations of black feminist LGBTQ brilliance!

2pm-6pm Sunday, May 15 2011

Stone House

6602 Nicks Rd.

Mebane, NC

Join us for a day of immersive wisdom where black lesbian elders in North Carolina share the practices that have kept them awake and amazing for decades in an interactive, intergenerational, skillshare and dialogue!!!

Invited featured speakers include:

Dr. Anjail Ahmad

Mandy Carter

Ed Swan

C. C. Wiggins

Janice Vaughn

Carolyn Grey

Harriet Alston

Bring a dish to share and be prepared to be inspired everyday from now on!

email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com for more info!

Indigo Days: June 9-15th, Durham, NC

2011-04-20T14:24:00.001-04:00

Indigo Days is a resource for black warrior healers remembering ourselves and reclaiming our traditions of magic, love and transformation. Inspired by the black girl healer folklorist, revolutionary character Indigo in Ntozake Shange's 1982 novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, Indigo Days is a context for every day as sacred space for the sacred task of healing our planetary selves and deepening the meaning of life.

Get everyday wisdom here: blueblackblessing.tumblr.com

or submit your own wisdom at blueblackblessing.tumblr.com/submit

Indigo Days (June 9-15, 2011) will be a week of celebration, learning and healing specifically centered on the power of black women and black genderqueer people to be healers, spiritual leaders and transformative warriors in our communities and on the planet. For more info on the event visit indigodays.wordpress.com

The week will include:

A Blues Porch Concert

Workshops on black healing traditions

Herb Walks

Blues Woman Bible Study (blues as sacred texts in the tradition of black feminist healing)

Sharing family remedies and herbal wisdom

A Blue Lights in the Basement House Party

Film Screenings

The gathering is FREE and all participants will be provided with food and housing for the week. Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for more details, and to confirm your participation.

To donate food, various materials, time, money or other resources check the contribution page: http://indigodays.wordpress.com/contribute/ or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or donate via paypal here:

Educational Materials:

Art Supplies of All Kinds

small notebooks/journals

photocopies

Transportation:

borrowable cars

driving help

Housing:

Couch, futon or guest room space for out of town participants

Airmattresses

Sleeping bags

Food:

Gift cards to Whole Foods, Kroger, Food Lion or Harris Teeter

Healthy vegetarian-friendly and protein-rich dishes

Assorted Items:

Stones

rosewater

birtwort leaves

magnolia incense

lady's fern

candles

flowers from your garden

mint

honey

roses

damiana leaves

cubeb berries

cloth

rasberry tea

cinnamon

vanilla

laurel leaves

wild hyssop

white water lilies

red sunflower

strawberries

mandrake berries

squaw weed

ginger/wild ginger

clay

chammomile

angelica

lemon tea

silk

ribbons

caraway seeds

bowls

linen

Dedicated: Request Line of the Black Feminist Future!!!!

2011-04-18T08:17:00.000-04:00

Greetings loved ones!

Because black feminist bass is the unstoppable heartbeat of the universe transforming. Because I revise every song I hear to praise your name. Because a movement is only a movement if it moves...I am excited to announce that my inner internet DJ (Sista-Docta Lex on the ones and zeroes!!) is finally launching a project to amplify black feminist healing and love all over your airwaves!!!!!

Yay!!!! Welcome to Dedicated: The Request Line of the Black Feminist Future! Here is how it works:

ask:

Ask for some advice about love, life, the practical or impractical pursuit of black feminism, foolishness at work, self-care, dilemmas or anything that might be on your mind. Typing a rant about a situation in need of healing in your life followed by the words "help a sista out" counts as reaching out for help and support.

You can reach out to me at

blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com/ask

or formspring.me/blackfeminism

Whether you leave your name or reach out anonymously you will get a song dedication towards your healing, affirmation and transformation of whatever situation inspired you to reach out with much much love from me!

listen:

You can listen to songs dedicated to you and everyone else at

blip.fm/blackfeministbass

or see the links at blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com

@alexispauline on twitter

I will also periodically be making podcasts with song dedications that fall into themes. You can subscribe to BrokenBeautiful Press for free on itunes to make sure that you get the newest podcasts when they come out. (Just search BrokenBeautiful Press in the itunes store)

collaborate:

You can also dedicate a song or affirmation to someone you want to affirm or to an ancestor you want to honor! Just go to the "ask" site above and type in your dedication and the name and artist of the song you want to dedicate and I'll amplify it on out.

We will also be having planetary release parties when the themed podcasts come out where people can share digitized mp3 mixed tapes with their own take on the theme of the podcast. Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you'd like to host release parties in your town!!

And if you are creating awesome black feminist music that affirms us all email me at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to send me links to your music so I can put it out too!

Yay!!!! And as always if this inspires you and you are able....donate!

love always,

Sista Docta Lex about to bring Black Feminist Flava to ya Ear!!!! :)

Announcing Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School Summer Session 2011

2011-04-17T12:35:00.000-04:00

Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer

2011

Rebirth Summer Thursdays:

Thursday. June 2

Unapologetic: Reclaiming Our Memories and Voices

Thursday, June 9

Bright: On Clarity and Power

Thursday, June 16

Gentle: On Cultivating Self-Love

Thursday, June 23

Futuristic: Towards the World that We Deserve

Thursday, June 30th

Planetary: The Depth and Urgency of Our Healing

Our intention is that after this summer month of Rebirth the Shapeshifter Survivor writing group will continue on a monthly basis hosted by participants as an ongoing source of support and healing drawing on work by Lucille Clifton and other writers.

For more information or to add your name to the reminder list email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

to donate click here:

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Spring Reading!

2011-04-09T11:09:00.002-04:00

Hey family! Stop by tomorrow (Sunday 4/10) between 1pm-6pm to pick up these books and more...or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to pick up any of these books on an afternoon next week!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind

Lending and Reference Library

Spring Reading Recommendations!

Spring into Action!

*Sisters in the Struggle : African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement

*Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days

* June Jordan’s Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union

*This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (several copies available!)

Reading in the Park

*Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles by Nikki Giovanni

*Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros

*The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

*Miss Muriel and Other Stories by Ann Petry

*Dreaming in Cuban : a novel Christina Garcia (she went to Barnard…like me, my sister, Zora Neale Hurston, June Jordan and Ntozake Shange!)

*The used world : a novel by Haven Kimmel (she's from Durham)

*Some things I never thought I'd do by Pearl Cleage

*Not without laughter by Langston Hughes

Twisted (like a Spring)

*Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience by Jill Nelson

*Sally Hemmings. a Novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud

*Passing by Nella Larsen

*Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor

*Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks

*Soul on ice by Eldridge Cleaver

Books That Help Us Grow!

*The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker

*Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall

*Sisters of the yam : black women and self-recovery by bell hooks

*Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise by Michelle Cliff

Especially for Youth

*Words By Heart by Ouida Sebestyen

*Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred Taylor (one of June Jordan’s favorites!)

*Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Puffin Modern Classics) by Mildred Taylor

*Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge

*What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Sex and Love (featuring a piece by our very own Shirlette Ammons!!!)

Clarity: On Clarence Thomas and the Worth of Black Life

2011-04-06T09:14:00.002-04:00

Yesterday my dad sent me an article from Slate Magazine about a Supreme Court decision written by Clarence Thomas that effectively argued that a black man, John Thompson wrongfully convicted because of evidence suppressed by 5 Louisiana prosecutors does not deserve the 14 million dollars that he was awarded as damages for his 14 years on death row for a crime he did not commit and 18 years served in prison unjustly even by the meager standards of prison justice we deal with in the contemporary US. (And yes, it matters to me that John Thompson, like my father and like Clarence Thomas is a black man in the United States.) I want to be as surprised as I am outraged that of all the conservative Supreme Court "Justices" to write this decision it would be Clarence Thomas, but that would be ridiculous.

I cannot forget that years ago my father told me that he considered it a "cruel joke" and an "insult" when he first heard the announcement that on the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, genius for justice and civil rights hero, a mediocre sellout Reagan appointee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission named Clarence Thomas was named by Bush One as the person to succeed Marshall and become the second ever African American supreme court justice. I was only 11 years old when the national government blatantly showed in hearings (which I was mostly not allowed to watch) that black men who would disrespect and lie about and betray black women would be rewarded by white men who could more quietly continue to do the same thing, when Thomas somehow claimed to be lynched by a fellow conservative and black female lawyer Anita Hill who spoke out against his practice of sexual harassment. And as psychologist and psychotherapist Dr. Alvin Wyman Walker says in The Conundrum of Clarence Thomas: An Attempt at a Psychodymanic Understanding "What can you say about a man who savages his sister?" (In reference to an instance when (In)Justice Thomas called his sister dependent and pathological for receiving a welfare check...which come to find out she was using during a short time to support their sick relatives who Thomas had abandoned-not that it should actually matter why she was receiving a welfare check anyway.) Indeed, what CAN you say about a man who savages his sister? You can say that he will certainly not feel accountable to any of us, brethren included, that he will turn against anyone, and especially anyone black if given the slightest opportunity. And now Thomas has taken his opportunity to justify a an attempted lynching (John Thompson narrowly escaped the electric chair 7 times during his years on death row.)

It is not a surprise that the Supreme Court would want to invalidate a decision that a black man who is wrongfully convicted in Louisiana deserves 14 million dollars for the cruelty that he has experienced. Imagine if ALL of the people of color wrongfully convicted with shady evidence received a million dollars for every year they have unjustly spent in prison....

To read the rest of the article visit The Feminist Wire

Lavender: "Love Between Us": Beyond Competition and Scarcity (Rainbow Reclamations #2)

2011-03-31T14:25:00.001-04:00

By popular demand and with infinite love WE CONTINUE a seven month process called Rainbowed Reclamation, a colorful women of color juicy poetry and food-filled space of sacred discussions that reclaim our bodies, collectivize our spiritual energy and the brilliant choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

Take a deep lavender infused breath and....
If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham...COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to find out how to host your own event. If you are an ally spread the word!!!!

Sunday April, 17th

5pm-8pm

La Casita De Amor (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)

*****Please wear LAVENDER and bring some food to share if you can!
Childcare will be provided and I hear there will be delicious lavender infused cookies by Kukia in the place!!!! *******

Here is the schedule for the rest of the series (FYI):

In Blue : "Once I Was Pregnant" :Circles of Rebirth: Sharing and holding stories of abortion, miscarriage and healing (Sunday May 22nd, 5pm---special Indigo Days session)
In Green: For Sechita: Sex Work and Solidarity (Sunday June 19th, 5pm preferably outdoors!)
In Yellow: Graduation Nite: A Sex Positive Queer Inclusive Intergenerational Conversation about SEX (full of juicy and complicated stories about "the first time") (Sunday July, 25th, 5pm)
In Red: "Keep Your Sorry": Break-Up Poetics: On letting go, rituals of release and positive relationship transitions (Sunday August 28th, 5pm)
In Orange:(Sunday Sept 18th, 5pm) Butterflies and Bad Girl Legacies: Sex, Survival, Revenge and Healing

4/10 Library Day #1: Eternal Summer Lending and Reference Library Grand Opening

2011-03-30T06:50:00.001-04:00

At long last the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Lending and Reference Library is open, mostly cataloged and ready for circulation! Come and celebrate! Check out a book! Scan a digital copy of a rare article. Make an appointment to read in the reading room. Get a spring spirit cleaning reading prescription from sista-docta Lex!

For a preview of the available books look here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind

Join us at the Inspiration Station (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for details)

1pm-6pm Sunday April 10th 2011

Yay!
There will be cake!

And if you live far away email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com about how you can donate a book OR click here to donate through paypal:

Or push the button to sign up to be a monthly sustainer (the big blue number is how much you'll be donating each month automatically)!

What to Do When God Hates You: A Lordeian Intervention into the Westboro Case

2011-03-03T09:41:00.004-05:00

Yesterday the US Supreme Court voted 8-1 in favor of a definition of free speech that includes hate speech on what the court considers "moral and political" issues in the case of Westboro Baptist Church, a small organization that uses the funerals of military and public figures as a platform to express their belief that certain deaths are evidence of God's punishment of the United States for its so-called tolerance of homosexuality.

Most people were not surprised yesterday at the results of the case. Most scholars of free speech statutes know that this is nothing new. This is certainly not the first case of its kind with a similar result. Anyone who is schocked might have a misunderstanding of the function of the state. The state is not convened to prevent hate. The state is not a medium through which we are trained or encouraged to love each other. The state, particularly the form of the state that we are surviving here in the United States in late capitalism, is in fact invested in moderating love as a more dangerous social factor for hate. Hate, an individual and systemized behavior based on a profound belief in the separation of people across multiple lines of difference, can actually be quite useful in a capitalist society in which it must somehow make sense for people to abandon each other into exploitation, to enjoy rights and access at the expense of other people. Love on the other hand, that force, that possibility that would require us to look at each other eye to eye, to refuse any exploitation or violence against any being, that powerful force that could make us indivisible is dangerous to the status quo. And love cannot be legislated.

As a student of the Lorde (Audre Lorde) I think it is important to remember in a mundane moment, where hate has renewed and relegitimized its normative role in US social behavior that we have precedent for a response that goes beyond the apathy of the law. When I see the images of the sensationalist signs of the Westboro baptist church, I find them apalling, but not original. In 1983 in her groundbreaking essay "Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger" Audre Lorde recounts a remarkably similar pre-Westboro demonstration of hate in the name of God:

"The bicentennial, in Washington, D.C. Two ample black women stand guard over household belongings piled haphazardly onto a sidewalk in front of a house. Furniture, toys, bundles of clothes. One woman absently rocks a toy horse with the toe of her shoe, back and forth. Across the street on the side of a building opposite is a sign painted in story-high black letters, GOD HATES YOU."

("Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger," in Audre Lorde Sister Outsider, 151.)

In the face of this particular instance characterized by Westboro Baptist Church, a particular family and the outrage of another family, the bereaved relatives of Marine Matthew Snyder we need black feminist memory. We need to remember that hatred is not only instance, but also institution in the United States. We have to see the connections between the emotional and economic reality implied by a God who can hate.

The logic of the decision of all but one Supreme Court Justice to decide that Matthew Snyder's father's claim of being personally harmed by the Westboro protests at his son's funeral was ungrounded is based on their determination that the protests were about moral and political issues and were therefore not a personal attack, but an engagement in admittedly offensive and hurtful free speech in the public realm. The one dissenting Justice's main basis for disagreement is based on the the counter-belief that in fact the funeral protest did constitute a personal attack against the Marine's father.

In other words, the words of the Supreme Court majority, to Mr. Snyder could be summarized as: "don't take it personal." But as black feminists we believe that the personal is political and that the political is personal. And not only is it obvious that the bereaved family would take actions like this personally, as a queer black woman hundreds of miles away, I take it personally myself. The fact that the protesters were a thousand feet from the church door and the fact that the story Lorde recounted happened decades ago can't numb a breathing person. I am impacted personally by the implication of a human insistence on a God who hates. I am angry about the consequences of such a profound separation. I am not content to respond to separation with more separation. I take it personally.

So what are the politics that this implies? In "The Uses of Anger: Women Against Racism," Audre Lorde explains that anger and hatred are not the same thing and that "anger is a justified response to racism" and other forms of systemized hatred. I think the Westboro brings home the fact that anger is indeed justified as a radical form of intimacy and investment, and the distance and discipline of the court system is useless in an engagement like this. In fact, the Westboro Baptist Church, which claims to have no donors or outside institutional supporters actually gets most of its money from court fees. Every time someone channels the hurt they feel when the Westboro Baptist Church shows up full of hate at a funeral into a civil suit, Westboro wins on the grounds of free speech and the money goes into their bank account, supplying that many more florescent posterboards of hate. It seems then, that civility, at least in the legal sense, is not an adequate response to hatred.

Let us take this moment to see the signs. Literal and implied. Let us take a moment to remember what we all know, especially as people of color and queer people overwhemingly targetted and locked down by the state, the US court system is not a place of love and transformation, no matter the decorations of lady justice on the wall, it is not a place of balance because it is not a place where we can engage each other eye to eye. The revolution will not be legislated. There are those of us who believe in transformative justice, accountability beyond punishment also known as prison abolitionists, who are spending our days and nights imagining and practicing what it would look like, what it would look like to create a world free from harm, and systems in the mean-time that actually address the root causes of harm instead of settling for a economy of punishments that separate us further.

If we believe that this is not all about money, that the bereaved father is not trying to protect his million dollar lawsuit victory in smaller court against the Westboro church, or above that is making a claim, like Antigone, that the dead must be respected, that he and his family deserve a sanctuary in their grief, that compassion is not optional but necessary in these times.... If we believe that the Westboro stunts are not just a strategy to bait people into unsuccessfully suing them but the expression of so much fear and desperation that they must invent a God who hates, that they must project the separation and disconnection that they feel from the other people in the United States onto their idea of God (i too have sometimes imagined a wrathful Lorde and briefly wished that she would obliterate those who oppress and violate my people through capitalist greed and racist hatred), if we can see that they have truly stopped believing in love as an option, that they are trapped in the short-term and toxic refuge of their hatred...then as Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter says, "the ceremony must be found," to transform the situation and it won't be found in a courtroom in the United States.

What is the ceremony that heals us from needing, wanting, inventing a God who hates? What is the form of engagement and accountability that could make the unimaginable behavior of the Westboro crew actually unimaginable, useless and ridiculous to the haters themselves? If we follow the words of the (Audre) Lorde, liberal ideas of self-expression as neutral sides of a political discussion are not enough. Audre Lorde says we have to face each other, in our commonality and our difference, eye to eye.

Thus saith the ever-loving Lorde:

"America's measurement of me has lain like a barrier across the realization of my own powers." (147)

And the ceremony happens here in every encounter if we affirm challenge of our very existence together: "I am...acting on you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself." (147)

This week, that measurement could be an understanding of law that channels us into supposedly equally hateable equally forgettable masses of flesh. For those of us who know that none of these things are equal and that all of our lives are unforgettable manifestations of the infinite, I'll see you, not in court but in that intimate place where a ceremony is happening that is more powerful than a God who hates.

In the name of the Lorde, who loves,
Alexis Pauline Gumbs

"If You Scared Just Say It": Shirlette and the Dynamite Brothers

2011-02-25T02:32:00.007-05:00

Play the song before it plays you. Turn it on before game recognizes game. Touch the wound inside before it heals.

This is the urgency of the sharp lyrics and doom bass-lines of the new collaboration between Shirlette Ammons, the Dynamite Brothers and a slew of North Carolina's quirkiest artists on their new project: Shirlette and the Dynamite Brothers. The title isn't the only thing that makes it plain. Full of lust not pretending to be anything but lust and love wishing it wasn't really love, this series of songs faces you with that encounter at the bar, that number exchange, those nights you can't get back and makes you wish you had at least wrote about it and sang to keep from crying.

The queer thing is that these are dark love stories without anything to prove. And for a crew of LGBTQ singers and artists in the age where the dominant political presence of that alternative- lifestyle-type-love is marriage inclusion and clamored for psuedo-respectability, this is a queer stance indeed. What if we already are who we're supposed to be? What if we give "no nevermind" to the chokehold structure of fairy tales and live our lives as the lessons they are? During Black History Month no less.

On "Kissin and Cussin," Shirlette sets the context, "your kiss is fist violent" and (grammy winner!!!!!) Justin Robinson opens the first version of the chorus "tell me pretty baby do you think you're too sweet to die?" Rhianna and Eminem and others have tried this dangerous and controversial hate-how-much-i-love-you trope before, but never with as much haunting, this "inherited, handed down" inevitability. The track is dark, like a chain gang walking on their hands in a coal mine. No one sees a way out, but the fiddle struggles like life depends on it and dawn breaks.

The album is a threat, what if we no longer have to be clean, shiny, fresh and without angles to be visible as who we are. What if we claim the place we stand in? Strut in the funky complicated mess of being here and changeable? On "Tomorrow Neva Comin" Shirlette and Yazarah assert that this is the question of the future asking "If you scared just say it you scared if you're not why not go head and take it there." This album takes it there, to that place too many of us can't admit we already are: ready to just say fuck it, let go of who we thought we were and what we thought the game was and just live real with each other in the face of the morning.

Play these songs before they play you. Accept the invitation to stop your frontin, tomorrow's comin.

Mississippi "Odd" Damn: Intergenerational Black Feminism is Unbelievable

2011-02-16T09:08:00.001-05:00

: Black women on the move have always been queer to the intersecting systems of oppression that rely on us staying in our interchangeable and demeaning place.

“It just sounds really odd. You know?”

This is what a white male police officer said to me several times after he separated my partner and I for questioning and we both explained to him that we were driving through Mississippi as part of our cross country journey interviewing black LGBT feminist elders.

And outside the matrix of uniforms, skin, privilege and visible weapons, ghosts and the bloody history of the state (in the specific sense and the general sense) his disbelief would be at worst a strange look to brush off and at best a conversation to have about intergenerational black feminist love in action. But in this case the fact that the officer could not believe our truth and was much more likely to believe that we were troublesome black teenagers joyriding across state lines in a stolen RV, could have been the difference between us driving through Mississippi and being locked up, or worse. We are inside a matrix where to be black and feminist, to be black and driven by love, where to be black queer women on the move together is unbelievable from the perspective of the state. And we still live in a time when to be black, queer, brilliant, feminist, driven, to be incredible, unbelievable, stunning, to be exactly who we are, is a threat to the state and a risk to our lives.

: Officer writing a "courtesy warning" to us for being "odd" in Mississippi.

The Story:

While driving on 1-20 in Mississippi a police officer from the interstate crime division pulled us over, citing a traffic concern: our following distance. Once we were pulled over, he asked us who owned the RV and what we were doing. We explained that we bought the RV, which is in my name, together with the support our community in order to travel the country interviewing our elders. The officer then asked my partner to leave the RV and called for back up. He questioned us separately. He asked us several times where we were going, how we got the money to be able to travel, how did we find these so-called elders, why would we want to visit them, was this for school, where did we live, how were we going to get back home, how did we get connected to these so-called black feminists, how did we know there were black feminists in the southern and western states we were planning to travel, and who are we to each other.

To see the whole article and join the conversation visit:

http://www.thefeministwire.com/2011/02/16/mississippi-odd-damn-black-feminism-is-unbelievable/

or http://www.mobilehomecoming.org/?p=919

Lending and Reference Library! Coming Soon!!!!

2011-02-06T08:48:00.001-05:00

Greetings loved ones!!!!

We are in the final stages of opening something called the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Reference and Lending Library in my community (out of my living room) so that people can have access to great books that can inspire and empower them to think about race and gender and sexuality and politics and everything that they may want to think about more. I'm particularly collecting books that are not in the local libraries and I'll be having library days starting in March in addition to the events I have here at the Inspiration Station when folks can look at the reference books, scan themselves copies of articles and chapters and borrow the lending collection to take home!

I'm really excited about it. Since this summer when I started the process over 700 books have been donated!

You can see the books that I have entered so far (about half) here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind

You can see the books that we are still "wishing for" on this amazon wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9/ref=cm_wl_act_vv?_encoding=UTF8&visitor-view=1&reveal=

Hooray! Maybe you'd like to donate some books that you already have? Email me at brokenbeautifulpress at gmail dot com. OR maybe you'd like to start your own lending and reference library in your community? OR if you live in Durham...maybe you'd like me to show you how you can catalog the books that you can share! Get in touch!

Much much love and booklust to everybody!!!

Lex

Bootcamp Podcast: The Sound of Mothering Ourselves

2011-02-01T12:03:00.001-05:00

Loved ones!!!! For those of you who didn't get to participate in the MotherOurselves Bootcamp in Durham NC this January here is a podcast featuring the insights of the participants and some beautiful music!!! Playlist below.

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bootcamp-podcast-1.mp3]

direct link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bootcamp-podcast-1.mp3

Also know that for the next week...if you become an Eternal Summerian (monthly sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind) your first gifts will be a mixtape of the meditations of release we did during the bootcamp and the motherourselves manual so that you can bring this work into your life and your community!!!

We can make something out of anything.

Insight from Mariel Eaves and

The Revenge of Ricky Williams "Sweet Wolf Shirt"

We recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

"Dear Mom" by Adele Nieves and

Climbing Poetree "I Wonder"

We establish authority over our own definitions.

Affirmations from Miya Binta

Doria Roberts "Dying Man's Wish"

We claim power over who we choose to be, knowing that such power is relative within the realities of our lives.

Estas Mujeres: Covenant by Fabiola Sandoval

Amel Larrieux "All I Got"

We provide an attentive concern and expectation of growth, which is the beginning of that acceptance we came to expect only from our mothers.

"When I Crave Mama" by Fabiola Sandoval

Me'shell Ndegeocello "Solomon"

We affirm our own worth by committing ourselves to our own survival in our selves and in the selves of other black women.

"I Am My Mother's Daughter" by Rashida James-Saadiya

Lauryn Hill "If They Only Knew"

We refuse to settle for anything less than a rigorous pursuit of the possible in ourselves, at the same time making a distinction between what is possible, and what the outside world drives us to do in order to prove that we are human.

"Mother Ourselves" by Julia R. Wallace (JDub)

Santigold "Unstoppable"

We recognize our successes and are tender with ourselves even when we fail.

"My Mother Ourselves Covenant" by Dara Montaque

Res "Bittersweet"

We learn to love what we have given birth to by giving definition to, to be both kind and demanding in the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success without misnaming either.

"Letter of Release to the Next Generation" by Miya Binta

Erykah Badu "My Life"

We lay to rest what is weak, timid and damaged without despisal and we protect and support what is useful for survival. We explore the difference together.

"Mother as Savior" by Miya Binta

Georgia Ann Muldrow "Runway"

We stand toe-to-toe inside rigorous loving and speak what has always seemed like the impossible to each other.

Truth Booth Conversation between Miya Binta and Manju Rajendran

Tata Vega, "Miss Celie's Blues"

As we speak the truth to each other it become unavoidable to ourselves.

ESG "Keep on Moving"

Infinite love,

Lex

MotherOurselves Materials! Gifts for Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Monthly Sustainers!!!!

2011-01-25T13:31:00.001-05:00

Happy January beloved and far-flung supporters of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind!!!!!!

Since it is a beautiful new year...we have a beautiful new gift for our beloved Eternal Summerian monthly sustainers! All existing Eternal Summerians and all NEW monthly sustainers who sign up before the end of the month will receive their very own digital copies of crucial priceless curriculum materials from the MotherOurselves Bootcamp:

*The MotherOurselves Manual (including the mother ourselves manifesta, playlist, activity station descriptions and a 5 cycle meditation of release including direct quotes from across Lorde's body of work...especially Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger.

*The MotherOurselves Meditation/Dance Party Mixtape: guide yourself or your group through the cycles of meditation and release with music, poetry and the mesmerizing sound of my voice :)

AND Eternal Summerians who sign up at levels of $20 or more will receive hardcopies of both the Manual and the Mixtape (well CD actually) and a one of a kind collage in the mail!!!

Hooray!!!!! Sign up today or on payday! Thank you for making another year of ETERNAL inspiration possible!!!!

Love,

Lex

nomad lullaby for kai

2011-01-23T09:59:00.002-05:00

1/23

may your birth be easy

as one two three wants to be

(free)

may you have exactly the hot drink and black skirt you want

wherever you happen to be

may your bright black brain be ever enough

light to paint by

may markerstained hands map you

back to drawing board belief

may the flavor of sunset stay singing

in your ear as praise

may you keep dreaming

next millennia dreams

set in the place you were two days ago

may your circles whirlwind you up to hope

may you see yourself in our bravest most beautiful faces

may our hearts beat and victorious dance your echo name

deep footprints bootsunk

heeled

may we know where you have walked by our reshaped pulse

and may you always know you are right

here

The Zen of Young Money: Being Present to the Genuis of Black Youth

2011-01-18T06:27:00.005-05:00

I fly with the stars in the skies,
I am no longer trying to survive,
I believe that life is a prize,
But to live doesn't mean you're alive.

Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, Angel Kyodo Williams
"Over" Drake
"Moment for Life" Nicki Minaj

what am I doing? what am I doing?
oh yeah, that's right, I’m doing me, I’m doing me
I’m living life right now
and this what I’m a do til its over
til it’s over, but it’s far from over

First:

I am a member of a criminalized generation of black geniuses.

My twenty-something age-mates and the teenagers behind us are often dismissed as materialistic, crass, empty-headed, impulse addicts. Elders mourn our distance from the forms of social movement participation they would have imagined and mass media relates to us as a market to be bought, exploited and sold back to ourselves, ever cheaper.

As a particularly nerdy member of the so-called thoughtless generation, I resent the implication. And I wonder sometimes what it will take to make the forms of social interaction, critique and that young black people are engaged in every moment of our high-tech or low-tech days legible to the baby boomers (since we all know that legibility to baby boomers is what makes something real in the United States).

So this rare piece (on my part) of contemporary hip hop commentary is an attempt to provide a specific example for an undercredited belief that is at the basis of my queer intergenerational politic of black love:

As young black people we are experts of our own experiences, we think about the meanings of our lives, the limits of our options and more often than not we choose not to conform, not to consent to an upright and respectable meaning of life. Even in our most nihilistic moments we are tortured artists and mad scientists, living a critique of a dominant society that cannot contain us and does not deserve us. This doesn't mean that we are always doing the right thing (Spike Lee), but it does mean that any effective transformative politic that is accountable to us, young black people with a variety of intellectual and cultural attractions and modes will respect us as genius participants in a culture in transition (singularity) instead of incorrectly assuming that we are mindless consumers.

Now:

I take, the example of two songs by two of the most visible young black artists around, members of a hip hop crew/entertainment company that has capitalized on glamourizing a sexualized, hyper-capitalist version of youth energy, chosen family, excess and fun: Nicki Minaj, Drake from the Lil Wayne fronted Young Money Crew.

I happen to have been listening to mainstream radio one day in the car during the week that I was reading Angel Kyodo Williams book Being Black, on the value of Zen principles for black people in the United States and, inexplicably free of the usual defenses and judgments I hold against the most highly marketed versions of hip-pop (no typo) and the self-protection against misogyny and hyper-exploitation that generally causes me to hold back my listening, I actually paid attention to they lyrics.

Of course it was incredibly likely that I would hear songs by Nicki Minaj and Drake since they are routinely rotated. It seems like 2 out of 2 songs that are currently played on the radio star or feature one of these artists. But this time, opened up by Williams' insights about the value of releasing judgment I began to wonder whether beyond payola and the corporatization and uniformity of radio the mass appeal of these two artists might actually not only be the attraction of black youth, and young people in general to...(young) money and the alcohol baptized sexually olympic lifestyle advertised to come with young people's access to money, but also a very different basic need in the lives of young black people, and a central need in my life: accessible technologies for being present to our own lives.

The year after I was born (1983) Lillie Allen created a workshop in Atlanta (as part of a vibrant and inspiring black feminist health movement and environment created by the National Black Women's Health Project) called Black and Female: What is the Reality? which evolved into a curriculum for self and community empowerment called Be Present. Could it be that the contemporary moment in hip-pop is keeping the attention of so many young people...including me, not for the predictably offered reasons, but rather as evidence of a deeply held desire to be present to our own lives in a culture too obsessed with progress to allow reflection or stillness?

Because really...what is compelling about the monotone of Drake's voice in his clearly un-melodic non-chorus on "Over"? Is it only the saturation of media with images of his arrogant attempt to bring light-skinned tall brothers back into style with each other and the rest of the world? Or is it also the thin line between Drake's monotone and a buddhist chant?

Because if, as Buddha writes in the Ghitassara Sutta, the lack of melody of the chant is designed to train us to release our attachment to sound so that we do not lose the moment behind it, Drake seems to also be accountable to something besides melody. What is it that Drake's tonelessness offers that compels my generation to listen to it over and over again? Maybe it is the value of the moment behind the sound wanting to be revealed. The reminder to self, a struggle most evident in Drake's questions and answers to himself:

what am I doing? what am I doing?
oh yeah, that's right, I’m doing me, I’m doing me
I’m living life right now
and this what I’m a do til its over
til it’s over, but it’s far from over

This chorus seems to me to describe and enact exactly the struggle of my own stillness, my own attempts at meditation and mindful living in the world, the difficulty of escaping evaluation of my own life (especially its productivity), of placing myself on a limited timeline, of not "living life right now." I wonder if other people, especially other young black people, who may not have recently read the writings of a brilliant black woman on the value of Zen awareness, are attracted to this same process, reflected in Drake's existential moment, depicted in the music video as sitting on a hotel bed talking to himself charged out of nonchalance into liveliness as soon as he jumps (still seated) and says "oh yeah, that's right, i'm doing me." A contextually distant echo of Audre Lorde's "I am who I am, doing what I came to do," but an echo nonetheless, with the potential to do what Drake says he is capable of, making the biggest skeptic a believer." Could it be that my fellow black young adults and teenagers resonate with this non-song because it is an invitation to let go of some of the skepticism we bring to the value of our lives in their mundane and moving moments and to be present?

The other function of this piece is that while I have peripherally overhead every black feminist who engages with popular culture asked about what Mark Anthony Neal calls "the meaning of Nicki Minaj" in the midst of some kind of valuing or comparison with Lil Kim and the Barbie brand, I have to admit that I had not developed an idea of Nicki Minaj's meaning or even an attunement to the sound of her voice until I was at Drag Bingo and a very fierce drag queen in a bobbed and banged blond wig did an impressive and well mouthed medley of Nicki Minaj song and I found the metaphors hilarious, (akin to what the smart-assed kid and poet in me is drawn to in the mid-career work of Eminem.) So I started listening to the words when I heard her baby-monster-robot voice on the radio. And when I heard:

In this very moment I'm king,
In this very moment I slay, Goliath with a sling,
This very moment I bring
Put it on everything, that I will retire with the ring,
And I will retire with the crown, Yes!
No I'm not lucky I'm blessed, Yes!
Clap for the heavyweight champ, Me!
But I couldn't do it all alone, We!

I thought, this is drag performance all over again. A young black woman channeling the energy and poetry of a young Muhammed Ali as seamlessly as Janelle Monae channels the dance possession of James Brown. And I listened to "Moment for Life" on youtube several times reflecting on what made the sequence above so affirming, and settled beyond my thrill at a young black woman that other young black women listen to embracing her masculinity and being proud of being a "heavyweight" was the repetition of "this very moment." The powerful presence of the sequence places infinite value on the present moment. "This very moment I bring," rumbles without knowing its embodiment of the energy and clarity of the Combahee River Collective's "black women are inherently valuable." What would would mean to affirm that what we bring is the moment again and again and that is enough. Period. Minaj literally uses affirmation as a practice in the piece (the repetition of "Yes!") and the closing trinity of the passage above, divine context (no i'm not lucky i'm blessed. yes!) self-affirmation (clap for the heavyweight champ. me!) and interdependence with community (but I couldn't do it all alone. we!) is exactly the mix that I use to keep myself centered. Who would have thought?

For a million reasons, most of them related to capitalism, racism and patriarchy it is extremely difficult for us, young black women, to be present to the miracle of our every breath. Usually we are waiting to exhale while the entire society collaborates to devalue and demean our living, our physicality, our impact. What are the possibilities of the resonance of an affirmation that moves beyond gender, that reaches to champion elders, that invokes a divine context and a need for community for all of us?

And more than that, what is the potential of my people, young black folks if we can be present to the value of our existence, and if everyone else can be buddhist about us, let judgment fall away and acknowledge the contribution we are to the universe just by existing as ourselves?

(We won't be cocky, we'll be vindicated.)
<3

Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is free, black and 28.

Mothering Myself

2011-01-11T13:50:00.002-05:00

"We can learn to mother ourselves."- Audre Lorde "Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred and Anger" 1983.

(photo also circa 1983)

mother
myself

i honor the ancestors and the universe for placing their passion for creation in my heart. in my hands. rushing it through my veins as faith and movement. i am full with love and gratitude and overflowing and renewed.
a-she.

mother. myself.

i promise to see myself from the perspective of this photograph that my mother took. a bright energy learning to walk. heart and hands open to celebration, to support. I can remember to believe that even if i fall i will be loved. always more surrounded in love.

mother
myself

i will honor this body as a place where life happens. i will attend to this body lovingly as a sacred passage where ancestors walk, dance, sing and fly, where new life will grow and be born, as an altar to their greatness that must always be as clear, open and whole as possible.

mother
myself

i take responsibility for creating safe, soft and well-communicated boundaries to protect and train my purpose which is sacred and which grows and walks and changes. i will remember that these boundaries do not make a closed box. they make a fruitful path.

mother
myself

i honor and cherish the act of opening. i honor and participate in the process of birth in a different and related way, every day. i honor my purpose when i create and support loving spaces for my community to be reborn, individually and collectively

mother
myself

that's me!
mother.myself.

The Queerness of Love: Photoshoot from the Juneteenth Freedom Academy

2010-12-13T17:07:00.001-05:00

(a genderqueering photoshoot
after June Jordan's "Poem for My Pretty Man")

the complexity is like your legs
around me
... See my Tabblo>

littleblackbook

Real Reading Rainbow: Queer Black Intergenerational BookLUST! Kwanzaa edition!

whirlwind for the warrior healers

'Indigo Was the Folks': Afterschool Brilliance

"I Know What That Is": Coming Out as Undocumented

Lex on Black Issues Forum! Watch the Full Episode here!

Making Majority: Majority Consciouness and Black Feminist Protest Poems (For the Raleigh Reclaimers)

Love is Lifeforce: June Jordan and the Horizon of Education

“We Are More Loved Than We Know”: Masculinity, Feminism and the Love that Will Save Our Lives

Way Home (Gratitude Poem #33)

Land (Gratitude Poem #32)

Flight (Gratitude Poem #31)

Full (Gratitude Poem #30)

What (Gratitude Poem #29)

Rarely Make (Gratitude Poem #28)

Garden (Gratitude Poem #27)

Walking Arawak Road (Gratitude Poem #26)

Stat (Gratitude Poem #25)

Origin (Gratitude Poem #24)

star-apple (Gratitude Poem #23)

Don't Sleep (Gratitude Poem #22)

break free (everyday) Gratitude Poem #21

Poet (Gratitude Poem #20)

Betta Know (Gratitude Poem #19)

re:generate: FREE wellness and resilience day-retreat Sept. 3rd, Atlanta, GA

spin (gratitude poem #18)

Found (Gratitude Poem #17)

Home (Gratitude Poem #16)

Decide (Gratitude Poem #16)

Enough (Gratitude Poem #15)

to walk it (Gratitude Poem #15)

Daughter Defined (Gratitude Poem #14)

Professional (Gratitude Poem #13)

Through (Gratitude Poem #12)

Dance (Gratitude Poem #11)

Such Rainbow (Gratitude Poem #10)

Lasting (Gratitude Poem #9)

What It Means (Gratitude Poem #8)

breathe (gratitude poem #7)

Circle (Gratitude Poem #6)

To Be Brown (Gratitude Poem #5)

Gratitude Poem #4

Saying (Gratitude Poem #3)

Sunlight (Gratitude Poem #2)

Gratitude Poem #1

Announcing Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators August 8-12 in Durham, NC!

Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive for Educators:

Rituals for Transformative Presence

Because your presence is a catalyst, because your students are a prophecy. Because June Jordan said it best... "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

The Premise:

This course acknowledges what has the most influence on students while they are in the classroom, the people who are there, the educators and each other and the energy we are all empowered to bring into the space.

This course offers:

*Silence (templates for self-generated, updateable affirmations and reminders designed to get you ready to be powerfully present and spiritually grounded before you enter the classroom)

*Sound (ways to fine tune and amplify your level of listening and responding to/being present for your particular students)

*Space (a process for designing guidelines and rituals that allow students to be present to EACH OTHER and the wisdom that surrounds them)

*Support (co-mentoring relationships and networking with other transformative teachers)

The Paradigm:

Supportive Course Components:

*weeklong summer institute in Durham, NC to work with templates, practices and to engage readings from June Jordan, the Black Panther Party, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs! (August 8-12)

*full color PDF workbook with posters, pocket reminders and accessories

*first month back interactive and motivating conference calls (August 25-September 25)

*video seminar to share with colleagues

*quarterly optional online-enabled participant hosted gatherings

*the presence podcast and reminder PSA's from Alexis

Sign Up:

Support the Course!!!

Love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Indigo Days Podcast: Sacred Black Feminist Blues

Indigo Days!!! Black Warrior Healers Unite!!!!

This Thursday 6/2 at 6pm Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer Begins!!!!

Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School Summer Session 2011!!!!

Thursdays in June

6pm at 204 Rigsbee Ave. #201 in Durham, NC

For Gil

Happy Birthday Sakia Gunn!: A Podcast Celebration

Don't Have to Do Nothing: Be Free (and still) Be Loved

Heat, Light, and Rebirth: On Resurrection

May 15: Everyday Brilliance: Resilience Practices from Black Lesbian Elders

brought to you by the MobileHomecoming Project (mobilehomecoming.org)amplifying generations of black feminist LGBTQ brilliance!

brought to you by the MobileHomecoming Project (mobilehomecoming.org)

amplifying generations of black feminist LGBTQ brilliance!

Join us for a day of immersive wisdom where black lesbian elders in North Carolina share the practices that have kept them awake and amazing for decades in an interactive, intergenerational, skillshare and dialogue!!!

Invited featured speakers include:

Harriet Alston

Bring a dish to share and be prepared to be inspired everyday from now on!