we ask mama-n-em, “where is the motherworld?”

By Destiny Hemphill
after Ruthie Wilson Gilmore and Evie Shockley

listen.

it’s in, not at. in the whistle & hiss, the steam of your breath as you chant
we ready (we ready), we comin (we comin) atop of a jail

building in ruins. yes, it’s in your breath & in the never dwindling
kindle of your fingertips as you reach out & touch

the hands of your kindred, the living & your dead, who keep you here
right here where we offer ourselves as the remains of the remaining

future. (keep breathing. don’t stop now). yes, in your breath
& in your hands that fend off, defend us

from the state that craves our death, seeks to snuff our breath
lick the bones. chew the sinew. & in the same hands tending

the fire, tending to the tendons pulled in flight, to bedraggled roots
of razed hawthorn trees, to the composting of our

present. tending to the dream that what we need & what others have believed

to be found nowhere can be found in the now here, like

in those moments you said, “rent shouldn’t exist, so here’s a little money for it”
or “don’t got money for rent, but take

all the food you want” or “don’t got food, but wrap yourself up in this”
or “don’t have anything to wear, but here’s a card. been thinking

of you. & a song written for you.
& a milkweed found by chance &

the paper you’ve been wanting so you can write your mama a letter to say you’re okay”
or “here’s a map of the hidden

ways to get back safe.”
listen:

we’ve always already been molding & shaping
spinning & folding, birthing & sharing

can you feel it? in our breath & in our hands. between us, we’ve got
the motherworld, the whole motherworld in our breath & in our hands.

Listen as Destiny Hemphill reads "we ask mama-n-em, “where is the motherworld?”."

Added: Friday, September 18, 2020 / Used with permission.

A poet, healer, and organizer, Destiny Hemphill is a Black daughter of the U.S. South with nearly a decade of experience in co-creating spaces devoted to poetry, communion, and transformation. She has received fellowships from Tin House, Callaloo, and Naropa University. Destiny is the author of the chapbook Oracle: a Cosmology (2018). Her work can also be found in Poetry, Carolina Quarterly, EcoTheo, The Wanderer, and elsewhere. She offers her poems as chants and rites to the sacred art of Black liberation. Destiny is the recipient of Split This Rock's 2020-2021 Poetry Coalition Fellowship.

Other poems by this author