Origin (Gratitude Poem #24)

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)

star-apple

For Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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

i.

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

v.

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)

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

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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

here

right here

we unleash home.