“I Have a Dream”
By Herbie Hancock

“More Heart, Less Attack”
By Bear and Bo Rinehart

Be the light in the crack
Be the one that’s mending the camel’s back
Slow to anger, quick to laugh
Be more heart and less attack

Be the wheels, not the track
Be the wanderer that’s coming back
Leave the past right where it’s at
Be more heart and less attack

The more you take the less you have
‘Cause it’s you in the mirror staring back
Quick to let go, slow to react
Be more heart and less attack

Ever growing, steadfast
And if need, be the one that’s in the gap
Be the never turning back
Twice the heart any man could have

Be the wheels, not the track
Be the wanderer that’s coming back
Leave the past right where it’s at
Be more heart and less attack
Be more heart and less attack
Be more heart and less attack

I stuck my hat out, I caught the rain drops
I drank the water, I felt my veins block
I’m nearly sanctified, I’m nearly broken
I’m down the river, I’m near the open
I stuck my hat out, I caught the rain drops
I drank the water, I felt my veins block
I’m near the sanctified, I’m near broken
I’m down the river, I’m near the open

Resting on and for the Earth

Interview By Brontë Valez
Photographs and Styling by Denisse Ariana Pérez

So many of us are worker bees, trapped in a capitalist 9-to-5 grind mindset that leaves us sleep-deprived, exhausted, and unable to imagine. Nap bishop Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, sees rest as a radical act of resistance and decolonization—particularly for Black people, whose rest has been and continues to be disrupted by white supremacy. Hersey speaks with brontë velez, a founding member of Lead to Life, about how to envision a new way of living that centers rest and liberation.

TRICIA HERSEY

You were the first person who came to my mind when Atmos reached out about this opportunity to talk about decolonizing, rest, and all these ideas around climate and environment—and really what capitalism is doing to the Earth. I think it’s so skipped over. Everything goes back to decolonizing in so many ways, but we skip over it for these quick tips. I always am trying to go back to the idea of decolonizing. This is a long, meticulous process, an unraveling for life.

BRONTË VELEZ

I’ve been thinking about this concept of eschatology—the theology of the end times and of death and theology at the end of capitalism—which I think your scholarship and your practice is at the center of. You embody your theology through rest as a praxis. It’s not even just like you’re bringing theory; you’re bringing humor, you’re bringing memetics, you’re bringing culture. You’re bringing performance in ministry. I’m curious what you think our dreams have to do with climate collapse and what you think our dreams have to offer to this moment?

TRICIA

That’s such a great question because that is the center of the work: this idea around a secretive, a metaphorical-literal dream space. I have uplifted that from the beginnings, when I started the work. The work began with me deep, deep in ancestor reverence and ancestor communication. It started there along with the ancestors, reading the slave narratives, working in archives, looking at photos, and really deeply going in and out of literal dream states where I felt like I was communicating with my ancestors. I would wake up in this unconscious state—between that liminal space of being awake and being asleep—and be having visions of my grandmother and visions of cotton fields and people laying down.

When you’re an archivist and you’re working in archives, it can be very overwhelming. When I first started working in them, one of the main archivists who I was training under was telling me that there will be many times when you’ll need to get up and you may get overwhelmed by the fact that you’re touching and you’re engaging with these objects that are real objects that people have held. They hold energy. And I was like, “I’m waiting for that, I want that. Overwhelm me.” I was here in Georgia holding documents that were slips of paper that would have a sale price of bodies—of Black bodies—and it was $20. Reading the slave narratives, thinking about how they were literal human machines—20 hour days. Uncovering all of this really traumatic cultural trauma and then taking a nap with it. Laying down and really uplifting my grandmother.

What came to me is that our dream space has been stolen, that there has been a theft, a complete theft. What could have happened if our ancestors had a space to rest, if they were allowed to dream. They may have received downloads from their ancestors and from God to say, “Go right, not left, and you will be free. Do this and you won’t be in slavery anymore. The button to that thing is here.” You know? These downloads that could have been given to us. Could our freedom have come quicker? I’m thinking about Harriet Tubman and her prophetic dreams, of waking up and saying, “My people are free.”

I think when we miss out on that dream space, we’re literally missing out on very important information, very important downloads and knowledge that are going to be for our benefit. I really literally believe that our path to our liberation, to really getting to the next dimension, is in dreams. It’s there. The information is waiting for us. The ancestors are like, “I wish they would just stop for a minute and lay down because I got the word for them.” They’re looking at us like grind machines and saying, “If they would lay down for a moment, I’m ready to come in through that dream space, that ancestral liminal space. I got a word, but I can’t give it to them in this dimension.” You know? If rest is another dimension, which I think it is, I think the more we go there, the more we’re going to wake up. The information is there for us.

BRONTË

Wow. I have goosebumps all over my body. This is liberation.

TRICIA

People think it’s just some fuzzy little luxury wellness idea, and they literally are not understanding that when you go there, it’s a space of deep imagination, deep generative freedom for us. I believe that the powers-that-be don’t want us rested, they don’t want the Earth rested, they don’t want us as bees rested—because they know. They know that if those folk rest enough, they’re going to figure it all out. They’re going to figure it all out and overturn them and the entire system. Keep them numb, keep them zombie, keep them on the clock. Keep them in a machine state. Continue to degrade their divinity. Because once they know they’re divine, they will not deal with a lot of this shit. So, I think that when I say sleep helps you wake up—it does help you wake up to the fact of who the fuck you are. And they don’t want us to know that.

Now, we even have people who feel so guilty for resting. Now, you have people who are collaborating with corporations so that the corporations can offer rest for you. The revolution will not be given to us by corporations. You know what I’m saying? The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be a collaboration with a corporation. They got to go, too. You know what I’m saying?

These odd ways in which we think we’re going to get our freedom. These odd ways of colonizing our own selves, of being colonized so deeply. When we talk about decolonization, we have to look at ourselves and understand we’ve been trained under the same curriculum, so we are colonizers as well. I think the pandemic has shown me great grief, great evidence and observation that we are literally at critical mass—and that’s why I keep telling people, “This is not about a soft, fluffy idea around just laying down. This is not some little fun, little cute thing. This is literally life or death.” It’s the matter of whether or not we’re going to stop and listen and slow down and reclaim our bodies and reclaim the Earth and honor ourselves and honor the Earth. We’re only going to be able to do that by slowing down. Rest is really literally going to be the foundation to build this new world. If we don’t catch that, if we don’t get that—not just in a meme and not just retweeting some bullshit—if we don’t really catch that in our hearts and minds and spirits and in our souls, and start to meticulously see resting as a love practice that’s going to save our lives and save the world, we’re done. So, that’s why I’m so passionate about this work, because I see it from that lens of: It’s decolonizing us, and it’s going to be allowing the Earth to be free. It’s a global bond for humanity, resting is.

BRONTË

I’m going to be in conversation this week with a scholar, Tiffany King. It feels like a strong week to be in conversation with both you and her, because her book, The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies has had me thinking and preparing for that interview about the “shoal.” And how, basically, Black people have been understood and have been historicized in relationship to water and these metaphors around liquid, the Atlantic, the lake. And native folks have been historicized in this relationship to land and to being displaced. So, she brings it to our relationship to the shoal, which is both land and water.

There’s this moment where she speaks about how the shoal would often be the last point before the enslaved folks were brought off to the boat or to be sold. The shoal was a site where, for a moment, the ancestors might have a moment to stand or wait. For some people, it may have been the last moment to rest your feet before you’re made to swim in shackles.

TRICIA

I believe rest is a form of resistance because it pushes back and disrupts capitalism and white supremacy. It is an active way of pushing back and disrupting these toxic systems. And it’s actually just pushing back and saying, “You can’t have me.” It’s a politics of refusal. It’s a politics of resistance. It really means something. It’s not a quick little hashtag or fun quote. This is life or death, and people need to see that. I do see this work as my life’s calling. I know my God and the ancestors have put this work there for me to be able to tap into. And I’m forever grateful if one person, if one Black person says, “You know what? I’m going to nap today and rest and not go do that.” If one Black person can begin the process, it’s going to be a pilgrimage. It’s not going to be a quick fix. It can begin as pilgrimage. Unraveling from the lies, from what they’ve been told about themselves, what they’ve been told about how much their worth is connected to what they do—if they can begin to unravel from that, I feel that my life has meaning. I feel that God and my ancestors are pleased.

I feel deeply that if one person can connect and say, “I’m off that train, I’m resting for my ancestors. I don’t care. I’m not going to be another tool for this capitalist system. I just won’t do it.” And that refusal, it makes space for others to join in and start this process. And so, I’m so grateful for that. So grateful for you.

Whatever that liberation looks like, it also means liberating the Earth from the pollutions and the poisons and things that we extract from it. And so, liberation to me is expansive. And I believe wholeheartedly that Black liberation is a balm for humanity. No one will be free until Black people are free. And so, we got to dig deep into the idea of humanity and what Black liberation has to offer the world. It is a message for our redemption. It is a message of resurrection, of a spiritual resurrection and, in a lot of ways, is a resurrection for the earth as well.

I believe rest is a form of resistance because it pushes back and disrupts capitalism and white supremacy.

TRICIA HERSEY

BRONTË

When I was in Alaska in September, I learned about the Arctic ground squirrel that sleeps for a whole seven or eight months, which felt like your kind of hibernation.

When these little beings are asleep for that long, then their neurons and the connections between them are shrinking, but then their brains are repairing after all of that decay. They have these intense growth spurts that are exponentially generating neural links that didn’t exist before they were hibernating. But when I was in Alaska, it was hot as fuck, and they are supposed to go into hibernation in the fall. And I was wondering, What’s their relationship to hibernation right now when the weather and the atmosphere and capitalism and all of this extractive industry has changed the weather and it’s changed their rhythm? I’m curious, what does it mean to not only protect our own risks but protect the land that facilitates the possibility for us to rest and for these other beings to rest who are entangled with our health? What do the Arctic ground squirrel’s hibernation practices have to do with how we get free?

TRICIA

I need a picture of this squirrel in a frame to put it in my office! This is like the muse here. I really want to be inspired and engaged with this squirrel a little more because I feel that so deep—no one is talking about the sleep science and biologically what’s going on in our bodies when we don’t rest, in conjunction with how that affects our environment and our community and our culture and everyone around us. Our bodies are their own technology in that way. And so, when you ignore your body’s need to rest, you’re deeper and deeper into violence. And so, what does it mean to have an entire culture that is sleep deprived?

They’ve already claimed it as a crisis—a public health crisis—that we are so sleep deprived. So, you have a whole culture of millions and millions of people who are not getting adequate rest, which means that they’re not tapping into spirit. They’re not tapping into empathy. They’re not tapping into any type of care for their bodies. Their brains are eroding. They’re not healing from trauma. There’s a chemical that your brain is actually bathed in when you sleep. It’s in the book Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker—he’s a neuroscientist who’s been studying sleep for a long time. And I love this book because he talks about this chemical that your brain is literally bathed in when you’re going through a full REM sleep cycle. Your brain is bathed in this chemical, and it helps you to process trauma.

Sleep helps you to forget trauma. It helps you to process it and deal with trauma. So, when I think about the trauma of our bodies and the trauma that we are under every single day, and the fact that we aren’t resting and we aren’t sleeping—we’re really killing ourselves on a biological level. Cancer and high blood pressure and diabetes all come from sleeping less than six hours a day consistently. And we’re walking around with a bunch of people who are literally sleep deprived and not able to connect with who they are. That’s a dangerous thing to have people walking the Earth and not connecting with themselves, let alone with the Earth around them. Let alone with that tree or with the water or with what’s happening in their yard. They’re not in any way connected to what’s going on with the sky.

I believe also that our lack of resting has stolen our imagination and our ability to be inventive and subversive and to imagine and to have hope. And to me, that’s true oppression.

TRICIA HERSEY

They’re just totally oblivious to the fact that this is a whole ecosystem happening within them and around them. I believe that’s why we have so much violence, so much racism, so much white supremacy, so much trauma. We’re constantly re-traumatizing ourselves and the Earth because, biologically, we’re in a state of pure sleep deprivation. I think it’s dangerous for ourselves, it’s dangerous for the Earth. And it leads to everything you’re seeing now. So, people think this is just about naps. One of our taglines is: “This is about more than naps.” I believe also that our lack of resting has stolen our imagination and our ability to be inventive and subversive and to imagine and to have hope. And to me, that’s true oppression. To me, once you have taken away a person’s ability to see their way out of a situation, to see a new way, to imagine a new world, to see something different, to invent, you pretty much have them. And I think we’re at that right now.

I have thousands of people in my inbox being like, “This sounds good and everything, but I got to work. I can’t even see how I can get 10 minutes to nap today.” If you can’t imagine how you could subversively and flexibly rest your eyes for 10 minutes, how could we ever imagine a world without police? How do we imagine a world without climate change? How do we imagine all these things where people can have justice and equality in a world where we weren’t killed by the police every day or shot in our sleep like Breonna Taylor? We can’t even imagine or get into the consciousness to be like, “You know what? I can close my eyes for 15 minutes. I can refuse. I can resist. I can say no. I can get off social media for two seconds. I can have a healthy boundary. I can refuse and resist and stop being a tool for grind culture.”

You can imagine it and do anything you want. We can imagine a new world. A new world is possible, but it’s not going to come from exhaustion.

Production and Casting Denisse Ariana Pérez,
Talent YMD, Opoku, Mooquidi, B4MBA

This interview was originally published by Atmos Magazine

Quarantine for Decades
by Brodie Theis

There is no shortage of pieces highlighting ways in which the pandemic has exposed our human interdependence. Supply chains halting holiday gifts. Infographics showing the path of the virus. Cheering for frontline workers at 5pm.  An increased loneliness and depression due to isolation. It’s difficult to deny our unavoidable physical human interdependence.

At the same time, we’re being led into an increased virtual connectedness driven by tech firms, private equity, angel investors, and the Dow Jones.  A server goes down in rural Oklahoma and we not only loose our ability to browse Netflix, we lose banking, music, texting with friends, FaceTime with mom, the home security system, and dinner delivery.

We’d be remiss to ignore the silent partner traveling alongside this growing digital captivation; mainly, the disintegration of our physical lived experience.  The inverse relationship between virtual participation and local connection is palpable.  Humans have limited capacities, which means that extra hours and energy spent online or in augmented reality leave less for the people and places right in front of us here and now.

The web of virtual connectedness continues to draw in additional elements of our lives, hunting down any aspect that is “ripe for disruption”.  We already barely know what our neighbor Mike does for work.  Now with the dramatic increase of remote employment we’re unsure if his employer even resides in this country, and Mike has little familiarity with the lives of his coworkers or customers.  They live in some other place, anyplace.

This is not a new movement.  The solemn truth is that we began choosing quarantine long before 2020; a preference for lockdown in the way we grocery shop, work, relate, and are entertained.

When the pandemic is behind us, will we continue to stow away to virtual worlds in private places, or will we engage that which is in front of us?  We will have the opportunity to protect the things that we love and cherish, from the onslaught of efforts to disrupt and redefine how we understand place, community, and relationship.

On Coming Out
by Lee Mokobe

the first time i uttered a prayer
was in glass stained cathedral.
i was kneeling long after the congregation was on its feet.
i dipped both hands in holy water.
traced the trinity across my chest.
my tiny body drooping like a question mark
all over the wooden pew.
i asked jesus to fix me.
when he did not answer.
i befriended silence in the hope
that my sin would burn inside my mouth.
would dissolve like sugar on tongue.
but shame lingered as an aftertaste.
and in an attempt to reintroduce me to sanctity
my mother reminded me of the miracle i was.
that i could grow up to be anything i want.
i decided to be a boy.
it was cute.
had a snapback, toothless grin.
used skinned knees as streetcred.
played hide and seek with what was left of my girl.
i was it.
the winner of a game that other kids couldn’t play.
i was the mystery of an anatomy.
a question asked but not answered.
tightroping between awkward boy and apologetic girl.
and when I turned 12.
the boy phase wasn’t deemed cute anymore.
it was met with nostalgic aunts who missed seeing
my legs in the shadow of skirts.
who always reminded me that with my kinda attitude
would never bring a husband home.
That I exist for hetersexual marriage and childbearing.
i swallowed their slurs along with the insults.
naturally I did not come out of the closet.
the kids at my school opened it without my permission.
they called me by a name i did not recognize.
said “lesbian.”
but I was more boy than girl.
more ken than barbie.
it had nothing to do with hating my body.
i just love it enough to let it go.
i treat it like a house.
and when your house is falling apart.
you do not evacuate.
you make it comfortable enough to house all your insides.
you make it pretty enough to invite guests over.
you make the floorboards strong enough for you to stand on.
my mother fears I have named myself after fading things.
as she counts the echos left behind by
Mya Hall. Leelah Alcorn. Blake Brockington.
worries that I will die without a whisper.
that I will turn into “what a shame” conversations at the bus stops.
she claims I have turned myself into a mausoleum.
that I am a walking casket.
news coverage has turned my identity into a spectacle.
Caitlyn Jenner on everyone’s lips.
while the brutality of living in this body becomes
an asterisk at the bottom of equality pages.
no one ever thinks of us as human.
because we are more ghost than flesh.
people are afraid that my gender expression is a trick.
that it only exists to be perverse.
that it ensnares them without their consent.
that my body is a feast for their eyes and hands.
and when they have fed off my queer.
they will regurgitate all the parts they did not like.
they will put me back in the closet.
hang me with their other skeletons.
i will be the best attraction.
you see how easy it is, to talk people into coffins.
how easy it is to misspell their names on gravestones.
people wonder why there are still boys rotting
their girl away in high school hallways.
they are afraid of becoming another hashtag in a second.
afraid of classroom discussions becoming like judgement day.
and now oncoming traffic is embracing more
transgender children than parents.
i wonder how much time it will take before
the trans suicide notes start to feel redundant.
how fast we will see that our bodies become lessons
about sin way before we learn how to love them.
like God didn’t save all this breathe in mercy.
like my blood is not the wine that washed over jesus’s feet.
my prayers are now getting stuck in my teeth.
maybe i am finally fixed or maybe.
finally God has listened to my prayers.

Veterans of the Seventies
By Marvin Bell

His army jacket bore the white rectangle
of one who has torn off his name.  He sat mute
at the round table where the trip-wire veterans
ate breakfast.  They were foxhole buddies
who went stateside without leaving the war.
They had the look of men who held their breath
and now their tongues.  What is to say
beyond that said by the fathers who bent lower
and lower as the war went on, spines curving
toward the ground on which sons sat sandbagged
with ammo belts enough to make fine lace
of enemy flesh and blood.  Now these who survived,
who got back in cargo planes emptied at the front,
lived hiddenly in the woods behind fence wires
strung through tin cans.  Better an alarm
than the constant nightmare of something moving
on its belly to make your skin crawl
with the sensory memory of foxhole living.

Poem copyright © 2007 by Marvin Bell, and reprinted from Mars Being Red, Copper Canyon Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. The poem first appeared in Gettysburg Review, Summer, 2007.

“Adobe”
by Bobby LeFebre

We have forgotten from whence we came
Confused deities for God
Forgotten about the earth
How we sprung from her
How creator molded us from her clay
How that makes us her children

We have forgotten the holiness of her soil
How it is a sacrament
The way it feels between our fingers.
How she always gives more than she takes

We have forgotten how her mud can make a home
a village
a community
A heart

Adobe

Sacred architecture
Bricks and walls fashioned by bronze hands left to hardened in the sun
Here in the southwest
Where the rivers run
And the ristras hang
And the valleys speak
And the bones of the indigenous rest beneath our feet

We stand

We stand here a library of collective memory
Stewards of the land
Where nature nurtured us
And our grandmothers endured

We,
A people before borders
Old as the wind
We, with stardust on our tongue
And moonlight in our eyes

Adobe

A tradition before machines
A ritual before desecration
A ceremony of the innate
A liturgy of the elemental

Adobe

Take me back
Sing with me a requiem to our past
These notes of inventiveness
These refrains of ingenuity
This mezcla of organic matter standing like an immovable testament to time.

A reunion shows former Triangle neighbors a past replaced by gentrification
By Josh Shaffer

Residents, including, from left, Willie Stokes, Mary Johnson, Bill H. Lewis, Octavia Rainey and Annette Murphy sing during a candlelight vigil at Tarboro Road Community Park on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. The vigil was for residents of College Park who have passed on. ETHAN HYMAN EHYMAN@NEWSOBSERVER.COM

On its 111th birthday, friends from College Park reunited around a childhood neighborhood they scarcely recognized — its corner stores and bungalows mostly taken by bulldozers.
The hospital where the elders were born — proud St. Agnes, long Raleigh’s only option for Black people — stands as a stone skeleton on Oakwood Avenue.

The blocks they knew on East Lane and East Jones Street surprised them with tall, modern newcomers that remind many of beach houses. For the neighborhood’s first reunion earlier this month, the roughly 30 people gathered heard from the Rev. James Davis, a relative newcomer at Grace AME Zion Church, but who still mourns the changes.

“Pastel-colored doors,” he said. “New houses being built that hover over the whole community. Streets torn up. They said they need infrastructure to support the new housing.” 

At a College Park exhibit hosted by Raleigh City Museum, guests lamented the streets visible only in black-and-white photographs. Rep. David Price, Democratic congressman for much of Raleigh, praised College Park by letter as one the city’s first to promote Black homeownership.

The neighborhood’s memories have faded so considerably that reunion organizers mistakenly printed T-shirts for College Park’s 101st anniversary. As the reunion date drew nearer, Museum Director Ernest Dollar traced the date to between 1909 and 1912, when David J. Fort Jr. bought the first tracts to meet demand from the rising Black middle class.

In the early years, College Park stood outside Raleigh’s tiny city limits. Streets were dirt. Old-timers recalled a church on every corner, and enough stores that residents didn’t need to leave much.

Reunion organizers drew a map of the streets and asked old residents to place a pin on any spot that conjured memories. Robert and Polly Rogers picked 1st Church of God on Boyer Street, writing, “I have attended this church for nearly 70 years.”

They recalled pioneers seldom celebrated in Raleigh:

Sister Mabel Gary Philpot was Raleigh’s first Black broadcaster with a regular gospel show on WRAL-AM. Raleigh City Museum

▪ Sister Mary Gary Philpot, or simply “Sister Gary,” who hosted a gospel show on WRAL-AM, the city’s first Black broadcaster with a regular program.

Mollie Huston Lee was Wake County’s first Black librarian and founded the Richard B. Harrison branch on New Bern avenue. Raleigh City Museum

▪ Mollie Huston Lee, the first Black librarian in Wake County, who founded the Richard B. Harrison branch that still stands on New Bern Avenue.

Olivette “The Fox” Massenburg McGill was known for giving free piano lessons around Raleigh’s College Park neighborhood. Raleigh City Museum

▪ Olivette “The Fox” Massenburg McGill, who gave piano lessons for free.

Their names drew nods of recognition from some of the whiter-haired heads in the audience. And their memory sparked this warning from reunion organizer and Southeast Raleigh activist, Octavia Rainey.

“Don’t sleep at all,” she said. “There’s not much left, and I just believe we’ve got to protect what we have.”

This article was originally published in the Raleigh News and Observer.

May we raise children who love the unloved things
by Nicolette Sowder

May we raise children
who love the unloved things – the dandelion, the
worms & spiderlings.
Children who sense
the rose needs the thorn
& run into rainswept days
the same way they turn towards sun…

And when they’re grown &
someone has to speak for those
who have no voice
may they draw upon that
wilder bond, those days of
tending tender things
and be the ones.

Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves
by J. Drew Lanham

Joy is the justice,
we give ourselves.
It is Maya’s caged bird
sung free past the prison bars
holding spirits bound—
without due process
without just cause.

Joy is the steady run stream,
rights sprung up
through moss soft ground—
water seeping sweet,
equality made clear
from sea
to shining sea,
north to south,
west to east.

Joy is the truth,
crooked lies hammered straight;
whitewashed myths
wiped away.
Stone Mountain
—just stone.
Rushmore
—no more.
Give the eagles
their mountains back.

Joy is the paradise
we can claim,
right here,
right now.
No vengeful gods
craving prayer,
no tenth in tithes to pay,
no repenter’s cover charge—
no dying required to get in.

Joy is the sunrise,
breaking through night’s remains
bright shone new
on a shell-wracked shore;
a fresh tide-scrubbed world
redeems what was,
to is.

Joy is on whimbrel wings;
the wedge in fast flight,
wandering curlews
curved-beaks’ cries
stitching top of the world
to bottom.

Joy is the soul stirred
underneath the journey,
gaze snagged on wonder,
not knowing final destination,
blessed as a witness
moored to ground,
worshipful tears
dripped into grateful smile.

Joy is the silent spring,
unquiet.
Rachel’s world not come to pass.
The season
dripping ripe full
of wood thrush song.

Joy is all the Black birds,
flocked together,
too many to count,
too many to name,
every one different
from the next,
swirling in singularity
across amber-purpled sky.

Joy is being loved
up close,
for who we are.

Joy is the last song,
drifting in
as dark curtains fall;
the sparrow’s vesper offering,
whistle lain down
in pine-templed woods,
requiem in me-minor—
church in a cathedral time built.
No stained glass.
No pulpit.
Altars everywhere.
Just listen.
Just Look.

Joy is the return,
the wandering warbler
landed in the backyard again,
from who knows where,
to rest,
to uplift lagging spirit.

Joy is the healing,
broken dreams restored—
soaring.
Langston’s words
kettling higher
on hopes,
drifting ever upwards
on ragged-mid-lined rhyme,
dancing to syncopated verse.

Joy is our lives mattering,
Blackness respected.
It is seeing my color,
hue not blinded by privilege,
the pious privilege
of claiming you don’t.

Joy is the proper name,
with no “n” in the beginning
or “i,” or double “g” or “e”
in the middle
with an “r” rolled hateful—
hard at the end.

Joy is your truth,
being the same behind my back
as to my face.

Joy is the sharp eye
watching little brown sparrows,
and the kind one,
focused
on little brown children too.

Joy is the ancestors
come before,
surviving the struggle
staying strong
in the midst of withering storm;
from shackled ancestors
through Jim Crowed back doors
to gerrymandered chokehold now.
Still here in spite of it all.

Joy is the payoff,
for those often down
but never out.

Joy is the thriving,
a people who won’t die
in the midst of all this
dying;
the breaths
ins followed by outs
easy—
without begging for air,
or asking your Mama’s ghost
to help.

Joy is the drive,
with no traffic stops,
with no taillights out,
with no tint technically too dark,
with no speed traps,
with no “yes sir officer sirs.”
No hands at two and ten.
No wondering
where the registration is.

Joy is the flashing blue light
passing by,
not meant for me.

Joy is the good news,
without new dead names,
no chokeholds or murdering knees.
A night of sleep
in your very own bed
without shots in the dark
—no more waking up
full of lead.

Joy is the morning jog
without being hunted down.

Joy is the loss
we take to gain,
monuments to traitors
torn down,
lost causes finally buried,
never to be found again.

Joy is the prairie,
where billowed cloud
and wild grass meet;
where the hawk’s glide
from there to here—
wherever;
its own choice to make
no border crossing checks.

Joy is the surrender,
to faith of push;
to trust in lift,
giving over to Toni’s command
to ride the air.
To float above
the trouble of this world
on a wish.

Joy is my grandma’s hands,
grits through gnarled fingers tossed
on cold ground,
to snowbirds she pitied—
a love for others
that became my own.

Joy is the all wild not tamed,
the rarest beast
with talons sharp,
or long teeth bared
in the faraway place.

Joy is the wayward weed
in the midtown sidewalk seam,
the one I choose to call
“wildflower,”
because it dared
to not be planted,
to not be controlled.

Joy is at the end,
a bruised purpling sky
when the night
comes again,
when luck is metered
by stars winking bright.

Joy is the frogs calling,
amplexus orgying delights.

Joy is the close call,
that wasn’t close enough.
Death past by you.
Life stopping by.

Joy is a heart still beating.
Even though,
what could have been—
wasn’t.

Joy is the knowing
that what this world
did not give—
it can not take away.

Joy is the moment
we grab in sweat-soaked
trembling hands,
that slides from possession;
stolen legally in bits and pieces
between yawning cracks
of despair.

Joy is tears,
drops of salt water
fallen in the creases
of an upturned smile.

Joy is the necessity,
that must be lain by,
what’s kept hoarded in a sturdy cache
ever ready to apply.

Joy is the gift,
just desserts,
what we deserve
without asking
or constant demands—
the comfort that comes
when no one else
really cares.

Joy is the reward
the salary already earned—
back pay
with four centuries interest
compounded daily.
At least eighty acres—
and two mules.

Joy is the day off,
just because.

Joy is the kiss of that one,
or the just verdict
delivered by twelve.

Joy is the everything,
the nothing.
The simple,
the complex.
Joy is the silly,
the serious,
the trivial.
The whale enormous,
the shrew’s small.

Joy is the murmuration,
then the stillness.

Joy is the inexplicable coincidence.
Joy is what was meant to be.
The mystery of impossibility happening.
The assurance of uncertainty.

Joy is my seeking.
Your being.
It is mine for the taking.
Ours to share.
More than enough to go around,
when it seems nowhere to be found.

Have yourself a heapin’ serving.
Have seconds. Or thirds.
‘Cause
joy is the justice,
we must give ourselves

This poem was originally published by Emergence Magazine