juneteenth & the black fantastic / speculative sunday hosted by @akualezlihope.bsky.social, featuring akua lezli hope, @miguelmitchell.bsky.social, @afutureancient.bsky.social, jacqueline johnson, & myself (in which the poet struggles w/o his glasses & makes up shit)
youtu.be/o2pdchyT33k?...
Sharing that my poem, “Δ Time Reconstruction: Declarations of the Possible Multi-Verse S_lv_s Named
Banna-Ka” will be published in the upcoming anthology, Amorphaville! Thank you to @bristokes.com for including my work! Please support the fundraiser for the anthology:
Instead of showing us grace and compassion for having to constantly endure a world that devalues us and the toll it takes on us, we are mocked and told to get over it and labor more. It feels like sometimes others only care when our work benefits them, not for our well-being.
In connection to Tarana Burke’s response to “believe all women” and changing it to “believe victims.” We live in a culture that conditions us to accept abuse and laugh it off. The more marginalized one is, the worse it is. Black and brown people are tired, we have an entire history on our backs…
Thinking about yesterday and the responses to Black and brown ppl not in the protests: America doesn’t take seriously the harm and trauma it has enacted on our bodies. Americans are conditioned to treat harm and abuse as something to brush off…
It’s important to understand that when a white person says “this has never happened before” or compares some oppressive behavior to a foreign regime, but it *did* happen here to Black/brown people for years/decades/centuries, it represents a massive blow to solidarity. It’s selfish.
I’m happy to share that my book PollyNation: A Seminary of Self won Inverted Syntax’s Aggrey Book Prize! #poetry
"Poetry lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before."
"..it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. The dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare."
- Audre Lorde
I feel better now as a 5’4” person😊
New Post on my Return Key project — “Returning? What Does It Mean to Be an Artist in These Times?” featuring commentary on Kendrick Lamar, Gil Scott-Heron and poetry from Gabriel Green. open.substack.com/pub/returnke...
Reposting for alt text and account In case you’re unaware the American Medical Associations has a YouTube page, they are doing daily updates on bird flu and other out breaks since the CDC can not
youtube.com/@americanmed...
We are not conditioned to want to be curious and learn from what’s unfamiliar. We think what’s familiar is the best we have and what if it’s not. And in fact it’s showing us it is not.
A lot of what is happening now is valuing what doesn’t bring discomfort, valuing what doesn’t force us to grow as humans. Think about how this country values mediocrity especially from certain groups of people; that is what’s familiar. We are conditioned to feel threatened by anything outside of it
Something I’ve been thinking about: what we value as humans is often not based on what’s the best, the most good or the most healthy, it’s often based on what’s the most familiar to us…
Woohoo, I just received some great news about my poetry manuscript! I can't share the official news yet, but I have a big smile on my face!
Trying to not to lose my mind completely while we're in the middle of the undoing of our entire government. So listening to Funkadelic
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WOZ...
The Trump administration is scrubbing the CDC’s website of documents on reproductive rights issues, sexual health, intimate partner violence, and more.
I'm trying to save them.
You can find the deleted docs at CDCGuidelines.com - I'll be adding more over the weekend.
Unfortunately, a comprehensive data privacy bill that is co-sponsored by women lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), will never see the light of day.
And too many of the people who say we need one rarely shine a light on their efforts.
Oh come on!🙄
"Bend your biology to the harsh, evolve your own flesh" 😍
Yeah it's frustrating. I've learned to just write for me at this point and think of alternative ways of sharing with the world.
Yep, sadly I don't thinking a lot of people care enough about their own lives and life in general to be invested in wanting to learn and being curious about the world around them.
Yep they were banking on people not knowing what words means and not taking the time to study anything. Nothing but superficial takes on everything which causes confusion and chaos because people don't know how to articulate what is going on.
and that any pushback is seen as "too sensitive," to the point that now people are surprised that the president is cruel is his actions because they thought he wasn't being serious. When we think power is about dominating others and not caring for others and ourselves' well being, we end up here.
I have been thinking about Audre Lorde's poem "Power" because of what is happening and how we have normalized abuse and cruelty as representations of power in our language and actions. Especially in the past few years, where people have labeled taunting and bullying as just "jokes" ....
"I have not been able to touch the destruction
within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold
or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire" -- Audre Lorde's "Power" www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53918/...
I remind myself several times a day that the people who are out to destroy me *want* me to be in perpetual reactive mode.
As urgent as everything is, it is incumbent on me not to live reactively. I will not let them run me, even if they are currently in charge of my planet.
Happy Chinese Lunar New Year
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVIK...
So the US right now is either on fire or covered in once-in-a-lifetime snowstorms and the current president's focus with these executive orders are not on any of that; just pettiness about the fact that any marginalized group exists...yep such a great president, the greatest...I hate it here...