1.
There are women sailing the sky
I walk between them
They who wear silk, muslin and burlap skins touching mine
They who dance between urine and violets
They who are soiled disinherited angels with masculine eyes.
This earth is a hard symmetry
This earth of feverish war
This earth inflamed with hate
This patch of tongues corroding the earth’s air.
Who will journey to the place we require of humans?
I grow thin on these algebraic equations reduced to a final
common denominator.
2.
I turn away from funerals from morning lightning
I feast on rain and laughter
What is this sound I hear moving through our bones
I breathe out leaving our scent in the air.
3.
I came to this life with serious hands
I came observing the terrorist eyes moving in and out of
Southern corners
I wanted to be the color of bells
I wanted to surround trees and spill autumn from my fingers
I came to this life with serious feet–heard other footsteps
gathering around me
Women whose bodies exploded with flowers.
4.
Life.
Life is
from curled embryo
to greed
to flesh
transistors
webpages obscuring butterflies.
Our life
is a feast of flutes
orbiting chapels
no beggar women here
no treasonous spirit here
just a praise touch
created from our spirit tongues
We bring the noise of mountain language
We bring the noise of Sunday mansions
We enter together paddling a river of risks
in order to reshape This wind, This sea,
This sky, This dungeon of syllables
We have become nightingales singing us out of fear
Splashing the failed places with light.
We are here
On the green of leaves
On the shifting waves of blues,
Knowing once that our places divided us
Knowing once that our color divided us
Knowing once that our class divided us
Knowing once that our sex divided us
Knowing once that our country divided us
Now we carry the signature of women in our veins
Now we build our reconciliation canes in morning fields
Now the days no longer betray us
and we ascend into wave after wave of our blood milk.
What can we say without blood?
5.
Her Story.
Herstory smiles at us.
Little by little we shall interpret the decorum of peace
Little by little we shall make circles of these triangular stars
We Shall strip-mine the world’s eyes of secrets
We shall gather up our voices
Braid them into our flesh like emeralds
Come. Bring us all the women’s hands
Let us knead calluses into smiles
Let us gather the mountains in our children’s eyes
Distill our unawakened love
Say hello to the mangoes
the uninformed men
the nuns
the prostitutes
the rainmothers
the squirrels
the clouds
the homeless.
Come. Celebrate our footsteps insatiable as sudden breathing
Love curves the journey to these women sails
Love says Awoman. Awoman to these tongues of thunder
Come celebrate this prayer
I bring to our common ground.
It is enough
to confound the conquistadores
it is enough to shape our lace,
our name.
Make us become healers
Come celebrate the poor
the women
the gays
the lesbians
the men
the children
the black, brown, yellow, white
Sweat peeling with stories
Aaaaayeee babo.
I spit on the ground
I spit language on the dust
I spit memory on the water
I spit hope on this seminary
I spit teeth on the wonder of women, holy volcanic women
Recapturing the memory of our most sacred sounds.
Come
where the drum speaks
come tongued by fire and water and bone
come praise God and
Ogun and Shango and
Olukun and Oya and
Jesus
Come praise our innocence
our decision to be human
reenter the spirit of morning doves
and our God is near
I say our God is near
I say our God is near
Aaaayeee babo Aaaayeee babo Aaaayeee babo
(Praise God).
