Introduction
These are not my words in entirety. These simultaneously are and aren’t my stories. In this art of Arrangement—a Cento, not unlike Blackout poetry—I’m taking the elegant, crafted words of other people’s stories and hand-rearranging them to tell my own and that of even further others, to cast my own spells to help those that read this grow and flourish and unlock their own potentials they’ve left behind until now.
I don’t claim ownership of the words, but the stories told by them in their new form are mine. The only stories in my own words are Who Are My People, a practice from the book in the section “Writing home: Bodies”, and Awakening, something written on my own.
Some portions of the Arranged body of work are entire paragraphs left intact because I felt it important to carry the whole message forward. Others are woven from across multiple lines, sentences, or paragraphs to create an entirely new story. When in doubt, attribute any beauty to the original author and any failures to me.
There are a handful of changes not written by the original authors – these are mainly tense changes, noun type changes, or addition of conjoining words, in a couple spaces the addition of one or two words for specificity to give readers minor context they might not have otherwise.
In many of these pieces I use end parenthesis as punctuation. The role this is meant to fill is similar to “;” mixed with the role “/“ serves in song lyrics – read it as a choose-your-own-adventure punctuation. Closed parenthesis are like an outside whisper. In the piece Mostly Static on the Survival Radio, strings of periods represent static via text. Beyond these notes, you’re welcome and encouraged to read these with your own voice and cadence rather than trying to find mine. Read these however you need to read them.
I didn’t use every story from Poetry as Spellcasting because some felt as if they weren’t meant to be touched in this way, and most guided spells and practices felt as if they might break if I bent them for this. As such, I primarily work through the essays of Poetry as Spellcasting, and I do my best to honor them in the way I weave them into my own stories. If I wove your story, your writing, I hope this feels as art inspired by your art and story to you, rather than a destruction of your own work.
This is the first comprehensive set of stories I’ve written in a long time due to severe trauma. I’ve had a massive writer’s block that has kept me from writing anything but in short spurts or out of trauma, and this book finally changed that for me, freed me. I’m so fucking grateful to the poets who’s own spells wrenched me through it like I do for many others. Thank you so so much.
Thank you to the editors of Poetry As Spellcasting—Lisbeth, Tamiko, and Destiny—for giving their blessing on this being comprehensively published.
While these arrangements, these stories are for everyone, they are first and foremost for other Black transfemmes, and for Black women as a whole. They are rooted in Black Transfeminism/Transfeminist Womanism, and are arranged from that point of view.
When every other weapon has been taken from you, you have to take your mouth and make a gun out of it. Baby, you gotta pick up your gun.
Table of Contents/Attributions
Created from the practice “Writing Home: Bodies” and written by Anonsee Storyweaver
2. Mostly Static on the Survival Radio
Arrangement of “Survival Radio” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
3. We Are: A Spell For Cracking Shells
Arrangement of “I Am” by Laurin Dechae
Arrangement of “Enchantment: The Liberatory Gift of Wonder” by Lisbeth White
5. As One of the Dead and Reborn
Arrangement of “Articulating the Undercurrent” by Dominique Matti
Arrangement of “Poetry as Prayer” by Hyejung Kook
Arrangement of “Revision as Mutability” by Amir Rabiyah
Arrangement of “Practice: Repetition and Return” by Tamiko Beyer
9. Connections as Liberation Magic
Arrangement of “Poetry as Practice for Spellworking” by Lou Florez, itself a conversation with Lou Florez, Lisbeth White, and Tamiko Beyer, with excerpts from “Craft of Witches” by Lou Florez.
Arrangement of “Ain’t Got Long to Stay” by Destiny Hemphill
11. Weave, Finish, Apotheosize
Arrangement of “Wander, Weave, (Un)know, Re-member” by The Editors of Poetry As Spellcasting
by Anonsee Storyweaver
Who Are My People?
Who are your people?
My people is brackish water, salt marshes, tree moss, fish & grits, holy roller baptist praise, speakers of tongues,
Healers through Sound, laying on of hands. mothers of mothers of mothers, cool hands on my forehead,
my people is standing stone, crossroads, keening, gatherers of Grace, constant and true.
–Gina Breedlove, from “Who Yo People Is” podcast, hosted by Sharon Bridgeforth, Season 2, Episode 27
Who are my people?
My people are the uncertain ones, those who move forward through chance and malice and disaster and miracle, the spiders weaving and hunting and watching and telling, the community I find and finding me,
The vines wrapping up the iron and the chain and overtaking it in blooms, the trees shading us from the oppressive and freeing our lungs from the poison, the healing and the poisoning that we use to cure ourselves, to feed ourselves, to survive,
Black folks, trans folks, dykes, those who preserve me even when I wish to rot away, those who wish to survive and those who know they must survive even when they don’t want to,
the tides of the river and the creek, the grip pulling out the invasive root that kills those around it, those who thrive even as they have more taken from them, the fist wrapped around the collar dragging to somewhere better and safer, those who believe,
those who were harmed, and those who harmed but seek better now, those who believe in a world that can be better, in which change is possible, in which growth is possible, in which we can eradicate the rot left by harm to us and heal the wounds anew,
those who fight and protect, those who help growth, change, those who guide us, our ancestors who wish to see us live a life free of the suffering they had, the people undergoing suffering we can’t control but can help ease, the family we have and build and save, those that we lost too soon, those who betray the oppressors and the betrayers and the collaborators,
You are my people so long as you wish to be, and you are free to make of this what you want to; a cousin seen every few months, a sister spoken to every day, an auntie, a mother, find your place so that you too may grow and thrive in harmony, no matter what adversity comes our way. And if you stagnate, you will have a family to bring you forward once more.
Mostly Static on the Survival Radio
survival radio……….pull what I need out of the air…………. . Breathe…….move…………………………………………………….navigate the unsaid by intuition, evading the risk of speech. ……………………………………”I love the word survival. It sounds to me like a promise.” I believe that survival is important, not because we need the bare minimum, but because we do the most and we deserve so much more. We deserve survival, …………We deserve survival, a……..Because we were never meant to…….If you survive, you get to tell the story……………it was in fact possible to “be a Black lesbian (trans)feminist writer and live to tell about it,”……………………………….determined to teach the world, and especially Black trans women, about the costs of silence.
And the possibilities of voice………That’s the impossible possibility I want. A whole life sustained by one small change…………the possibility of “saying the right thing, at the right time, to the right person.”…………….I’m doing my work, she says, are you doing yours?………Your survival helped me believe more in community……….What would it have taken for you to know and feel, ……..That we all loved you. That you would have had your pick of guest beds and couches from here to Black (trans)feminist eternity, coast to coast. If I was more at home with myself, could I have made you feel more at home?…………….I protect myself from what could save me…………I love you. Please forgive me. I am still learning………
It’s the one thing I can change………..
~~
In this piece, the listener is stranded on a lone mountaintop with nothing but an emergency radio for company. The signal is spotty, and all you can hear of a crucial survival story is choppy pieces through the static in which you have to put together the pieces to survive.
This is a reflection of how feminism, even Black feminism, often leaves out transfemmes from considerations in the theory; leaving us to piece together a lifesaving survival method for ourselves. Transfeminism, and Black transfeminism/Transfeminist Womanism, grow from these emptinesses and us having to “fill in the blanks” with what keeps us alive when “regular feminism” leaves us stranded.
This piece inspired this entire compilation, and it built out from here, with the form changing as I figured out more of what worked for me. I prefer the spoken/recorded version of this piece for adding actual static, but I believe the energy comes across still.
We Are: A Spell For Cracking Shells
1.
once the ancestor stars were not just night lights to wish upon)
it was about the same sad thing unsaid across generations)
the seed / the sprout / the wilt / and all that passes in between)
2.
in the dark, candlelit room you try not to appear
in tears you try not to look like you are pleading
(you try to control your voice)
you wonder to yourself, half mockingly, half earnest,
how many ways are there to name a wound?)
3.
the first step is always to point directly to the place that hurts)
(and the tilting magic spread like a lightness in the head
where she knows / always and already / and all she can hear is no)
so you can’t stay here knowing full well / you have every opportunity to leave)
(are you sure sweetheart that / you want to be well?)
4.
you were unmoored in an unraveling prayer)
an astral guide (a map of scars) / skinning the palms of your hands)
5.
you fell into more open jaws than you can count)
so you feed your wounds healing herbs & coconut water)
(“self preservation warned some of us that we could not afford to settle for one easy definition, one narrow individuation of self.”)
6.
(what would you name yourself, now that you could?)
you whisper to yourself)
articulate with language)
you believed the spacetime continuum couldn’t hold as much of you as you were able to accept)
(love ain’t flesh and muscle like it could be / imagine the remedy that ends the split / made of the answers)
7.
you feel your voice start to change, blooming)
(aren’t you holy / aren’t we proof enough?)
if you can name yourself)
until the whole thing begins again)
8.
(`i am whole / i am love and love and love / i am perfect and right and divine / in all my totality`)
(the spell she is spinning around herself)
9.
someone told me that i deal in wormholes (or that you can only follow me so far down) / like warping portals to the version of yourself you have not yet imagined)
(`it wasn’t another planet at all, and it wasn’t a time machine / doll, a world where you can name yourself anything`)
(your love is too beautiful to have thrown back on your face.)
10.
“our women / the ones left behind / always know the taste of their own strength— bitter at times it might be”)
what it means to know / and speak the end of a cycle / self fulfilling prophecy)
(who told you your dreams were not good enough to sit on?)
this time i ask you what you want)
say it)
more)
(“i found a goddess in myself / and i loved her fiercely”)
11.
the concept of home is located within the deepest recesses of the body)
most believe this is where the shadows of our selves hide)
(you look whole enough to me)
12.
you must return home)
(“i had never felt visible before, nor even known i lacked it”)
the first step is always to point directly to the place that hurts)
you are prism reborn, you are sharp refracted everything)
13.
“armed with scars / healed / in many different colors)
i look in my own faces as eshu’s daughter crying / if we do not stop killing the other in ourselves / the self that we hate in others / soon we shall all lie in the same direction.”)
“i’m not real, i’m just a reality; i come to you as the myth”)
You are the deepest spell spoken. Whisper to make your mouth your own.
Becoming the Enchanter
There is a kind of rhetoric towards obsession in the study of poetry)
Obsession, in this case, referencing the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent desire, thought, feeling, etc)
dive headlong into the topics one ruminates on, churns, and repeats)
lean into what preoccupies)
perceive all the angles with every sense available)
let the repetition of what is perceived become its own form and function)
an incantation of sorts)
a ritual recitation)
a single poem or collection)
(revel)(in the)(permission to be obsessed)
with formalism and free verse, with rhythm and sound)
consider these experiences worthy)
the beginning of a healing)
a new liberation of sorts)
profoundly familiar, bone-level familiar, (anciently familiar)
dreamlike states) sensory and expansive) tangible and alive)
pursue) this study of connection)
engage with the subtle energies of the world)
engage this sense of wonder and enchantment)
there are often moments of wonderment, moments when the imaginal breaks us into a painful and sacred longing toward what might be possible)
beyond the horror we are experiencing)
begin here)
it is acceptable to continue to pay attention)
hone this skill of open-eyed awareness into an adeptness and faculty for engaging with these subtle energies of the world, for relating and conversing, for channeling them into magic and healing)
(recover the knowledge)
(reclaim our original wholeness)
what a wonderful word, enchantment.)
the creation of a new something material, tangible, lived)
the container to hold the transformation is awareness itself. Our attention, and how it is held, creates the very container for change)
(follow)(those relentless curiosities)
(become)
(arise)
we begin with the tools at hand, the obsession or idea of what we want to write is the initial substance to be transformed)
Our attention) the energy brought in to spark the change, which in turn develops and informs the nature of the change itself)
Not all attention is love and there is great danger for harm in conflating the two)
An overbearing or already-knowing quality of attention doesn’t lead to a truly innovative transformation, but rather a nearby and comfortable shift in circumstance)
“Did you let that tree make you into something different? No? Then don’t waste my time.”
(relearn)(enchantment)
(be enchanted)
(the edge of what is known, into a new beyond)
re-enchantment with the world as a whole becomes) resistance against isolation, exploitation, alienation)
True transformation, true power, does not exist in a vacuum)
There is wonderment in enchantment)
both vulnerability and a willingness toward that vulnerability)
make room for play and the seepage of surprise)
stretch the container of our perception beyond what is physically and materially known)
(We must be open to awe)
While enchanted, the poem becomes a vessel, energy summoned and held in the container of line)
innocence) even the slow alchemy of revolution might be graced with something that may resemble play, and feel even a bit like delight)
being present to witness the transition)
the shift urging me along to a new state of being)
creating a rhythm without break)
I stretch, I extend, I become expanded)
I hold it with wonder)
As One of the Dead and Reborn
I tend to my beloved dead and dying)
offered my blood to the soil freely so that the seeds I’d sown sang them favor)
My ancestors had known the sprouts as kin, and so the blooms grew
chatty)
voracious)
eager)
I was no longer an intruder, I was welcomed ((to be what we are), and we shared our common friends, and our enemies. The ancestral spirits rooting for my survival had so persistently loved them too. And the systems seeking to destroy me were coming for us both)
We shared our medicine there, spared the spiders, the webs of her children—mythmakers, herbalists, scientists, and mystics—forged a bond.)
Hear from them directly, bring nature forth through them, gift the willing nature where their own spirit has always been)
Poetrymaking serves as a conduit for that which has been buried, unarticulated)
Not the thunderclap, but how our bodies respond to the boom)
the slow exhaling shoulder-drop after a deep huff of Lavender)
A ritual of replication and noticing, witness and be borne witness to, a portal to speak, not mouth to mind, but spirit to spirit)
I am a girl who can see thi[n]gs that are not ther[e].)
The manifestation of these gifts asserted themselves in me as a necessity)
In one hand, to hear the undercurrent)
with the other, to speak it myself)
to feel what one could not otherwise know—plucking invisible energetic strings—with symbol and rhythm and pattern and repetition and body and spirit beyond an ordinary)
ancestral spirits wanted to share the magnitude and curiosity to limited mortality)
an environment populated by infinite witness and onlookers)
energy)
nature)
every visible clue alludes to convey what it carries inside it)
wear their poetry, coiling tendrils of Passionflower, translucent moon-white pallor of Ghost Pipe)
an elaborate nature-writ metaphor)
all that the light does not touch in us)
II.
what began as simple observation and ritual rapidly evolved into accordance)
endings and openings)
Once upon a time there was a girl
i am not the only one.
When she wept she cried other women’s tears.
Ancestral Dreams
in other women’s visions
Expand. Open up to it. Welcoming. Holding.
What do you do with your believing?
In unison. At once. Forever. Expand.
Beyond it, a river. Cool water.
Where do you go when it carries you?
cracked open sense of possibility)
be in relationship with the world)
III.
help the dying to honor what is coming)
to aid in communication)
So wait, notice, listen about death)
How little (humans) know of it)
How fear of the small bit we are aware of squanders the glory of life itself)
it was all very casual and bright)
Not every encounter is about you—sometimes it’s what you do for us)
I felt brutalized by loss)
afraid of being notified of another)
I did not know where to seek shelter)
all that fear, grief was threatening to submerge me)
But anger shot up like crimson flowers)
a remedy for something bleeding)
IV.
I wanted it witnessed. To capture the immensity.
Longing, despairing, hoping, missing, doubting, waiting, holding, aching, bargaining, regretting, worrying, pleading, wanting and wanting and wanting and wishing)
I cleaved to the magic of poetry)
((to the magic of stories, of connection))
prayer to me too, expressed in synchronicity, and the memory of the visitations in dreams)
Ethereal poetry of the unconscious)
The obscure song)
A flower essence)
A language before language, the old ways of speaking)
Everything collaborating to hold that within me)
I am not who I used to be.
I hardly recognize myself.
I am in the dark. The dark is not in me. There’s a difference.
I love you and yes I am not forgotten or forgetting you.
whispers over the meadow
the birds chirp on
I can’t talk about beauty, even if it had its beauty too.
Even if in the dark there is a light.
Even if I am the light.
Though I do not emanate.
Being is not easy.
I respect that.
I can’t feel anything but ((my)) own anger.
You don’t have to have a great shining moment.
All subtlety
let it all be
there’s no other way.
I love you.
V.
and what shall we do, we who did not die?)
I delivered sermon after sermon on death)
the season of losing and finding again)
a conspiracy of care)
What can I provide for those who so many have not yet learned to hear?)
What is my service as one of the dead, of the human and more-than-human? As a gardener? As a poet?)
at the core of much trauma, denied a customary regard for one’s being, that’s a poem my spirit knows by heart)
Healing is a sense of noticing and being noticed by eyes that look favorably upon you)
Eyes that see you as a precious and integral part of something that they too are a part of)
You belong, you are not alone here)
Familiar stranger conjurer poets who are willing to serve as a community of loving witnesses)
What has come before)
What is yet to come)
And the unseen already here)
What is “not there”)
Once You Are Prayed To
Listen. What do you hear in your stillness from your innermost self)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me
consumed in that overwhelming existence
so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us
prayer out of urgency and necessity)
a calling out from the heart)
dark sobbing)
calling out)
now i lay me down to sleep
an echo of terror
the possibility of annihilation
a living treasure)
the only tangible thing too precious to keep)
twice rejected and creatively disappeared)
I felt ghostly, haunting the dark subterranean levels)
turning on the lights to look, searching for something)
And in my wandering I came across language of origin)
Vaguely familiar but mostly bewildering)
magical, charged with intention to heal, and in my grief, it resonated deeply)
The poem begins with an invocation)
ritualized and intimate)
prayer)
and I sensed then and now a yearning to bridge distance, between the self and the called-upon power as well as the hurt and healed state)
mighty within)
all you then withstood, and were crushed)
a state of physical division and aural similarity)
a sort of sonic stitching of the break)
the poem declares their power)
sacred and powerful)
prayer)
invocation, sound, repetition)
a magical, or in other words, practical, application of language)
a goddess)
calling us to attention, intention)
may the tide
that is entering even now
in a space of nature
that is simultaneously embodied
you and I
a blessing upon us all
repetitions with more frequency
sharper enjambments and decreased time
an increasing sense of urgency
may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Wishing just as prayer is)
with gentle assuredness)
bringing blessing into reality by the power of utterance)
fortitude)
fulfilled)
poetry and prayer)
examining patterns and principles)
address, invocation, naming, and repetitions of sound and word)
weaving a sonic spell with the intention of bringing something into reality)
passed down through generations)
pored over by others and then to pore over it myself)
see how it is made and then apply those ways of making to my own)
a poem-prayer-spell)
power from repetition through time, where repetition itself grants faith and force)
When we are in extremity, when we are calling out in desperation, there is a place where the only thing that will work is to make anew)
all words seem to fail, but silence would swallow us whole)
step forward into darkness, hands outstretched, into the not-knowing—the only way to emerge was to go through the places I falter and feel uncertain)
telling my stories and singing children’s songs)
prayers I heard, though I can’t remember them)
mainly sound and feeling, like music)
a kind of prayer-spell)
paying my respects to ancestors I had never met)
for good fortune, prosperity, and protection)
Sometimes they strongly resemble beautiful, unreadable swirls and loops)
a shadow, impression, and abstraction of conventional writing)
words I believe we will never have words for)
an inner frequency)
What do you hear in your stillness?)
To see what happens when we are still and receptive)
a terrifying prospect)
When our sense of self is shaken, we have to imagine new ways of being and relating)
in the repetition of words and sound)
a meditative state, where the mind quiets, and whatever has been waiting for the space to come forward into our consciousness can do so)
an unexpected line or image)
even working with resistance)
I am learning to listen)
sometimes, our lineages are not continuous.)
that when direct lines of blood and culture are severed)
we can find other paths of connection and seeking understanding)
If we let go of the striving)
instead living in each moment)
of being in uncertainties)
in the intense attention
the boundaries between self and word and world dissolve)
to pray, to invoke, to appeal)
a larger divine connection)
praying)
poetry)
writing)
an act of faith)
Word can make the world)
what if you are the angel?)
What if the power you are afraid to call upon and know is your own power?)
tapping into our own divine)
consumed in that overwhelming existence)
a divine alignment rather than a loss to be feared)
we are not separate from, but entangled with our communities and surrounding)
which means we can in fact transform ourselves and the world both)
I enter into communion with another, broadening my understanding of myself and what words can do)
I can tend)
I can be tender and receptive to the world that was and to the world that is)
I can also visualize and bring intention toward a new and better world through the power of language)
together, what future can we call into being through our poems, our prayers?)
The Terms of Your Story
(in the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see)
fear and anxiety on faces)
scared of the unknown journey we were about to embark on)
of being judged)
of failing)
of revealing too much)
This is not a space that will be cruel)
We make space)
We hold one another accountable)
Language laid bare could illuminate)
Weep)
Sing)
writing often poured out of me)
a specter inside)
there was always a pressure)
leaving little room for traumas)
There wasn’t space for me as a queer and trans writer of color to name these traumas)
There was no space to name how the structure reinforced white supremacy)
it was the anger, depression, and rage ((that)) made space for me)
I was somehow inherently bad)
Unlovable)
Worthless)
And so I tried my best)
To fail—it meant that all the things said about me were true, as a nonwhite queer)
It was my people, ((other trans women,)) who were my impetus)
If I could have this compassion for them, why then could I not deliver that same compassion to myself?)
It is said that healing is not linear)
this is absolutely true)
My writing was directly connected to this journey)
I’ve learned to approach myself more now)
with tenderness and care)
My anxieties from being in white-dominated spaces),
and from feeling lost ((trying to find)) others)
I do what I can to calm my nervous system down)
I turn inward with self-compassion and care)
and I ask myself the hard questions)
Is what I say here conveying my truth?
Do I want to go deeper?
Instead of running away from my pain and fear, I run toward it)
I am gentle with myself)
I tune into my body and my spirit)
And I listen for the wisdom within me and from my good ancestors)
It’s messy, tricky, and exhausting)
But it is a gift to go deeper and to decolonize)
we don’t have to be perfect in order to be loved, to survive under white supremacy)
((perfection is simply gilded stagnation))
we thrive when we embrace our imperfections)
a form of reconnection with our truest essence)
It’s taught me how to soothe the terror)
to embrace transformation within myself)
Return Upon The River
I set out)
I make my way down streets lined with old brick factories)
plate glass salons)
a giant oak and beech)
the field)
I arrive at the river, the creatures call to each other, and I call out to them)
At the water’s edge, I crouch down)
I offer thanks to the spirits)
ancestors)
and Indigenous stewards of the land and river)
I ask for blessings and protection)
I set afloat on the water)
I turn towards home)
I have been practicing this ritual)
return)
it began of the river)
eventually that morphed into realization)
When I started)
I grew)
and soon ritualized the acts)
the words came to me right with the land and waters)
the spirits and ancestors of this place)
Blessings came as the water flowed)
gratitude arrived as the tide brought ocean waters upstream)
swimming in stillness)
protection)
inspiration)
I repeat each)
These have become sacred to me)
this ritual)
one of the most important things is to show up)
familiar)
sometimes maddening)
(revelatory)
the act of what happened)
of noble truths)
I learned through experience, not every day, but enough to keep me going)
Following the direction, I showed up every week)
I spent little time celebrating)
Instead I process)
A year passed)
and then another)
it became harder and harder)
living into the truth I still believed)
I came to terms with the truth)
The value was in the process)
in the learning)
in the discipline)
This is a slippery truth to hold)
ingrained in many of us)
You have to return to the source)
But if you return)
healing)
There is no endpoint)
There is no arrival)
Healing is a continual doing)
a continued process)
being attentive)
learning)
and discerning)
flow)
spill)
grow)
What happens is messy)
And I keep going)
I return to it)
days)
months)
years later)
I’m listening to something inside me)
to the spark of the divine channeled through me)
that which I have invited in)
for more than two decades I have been practicing ritual work)
a ritual I trust)
a process beyind the material realm)
what is required of me is discerning what arrived)
recognizing signs)
messages or invitations)
I’m learning to trust myself and what I know)
ritual and magic are mutually cocreated)
to help me learn what I need to know to manifest what I desire)
Through the river, I have come to learn that place better than I know any other)
The river has taught me how to pay attention)
how to see something new)
The river—and all the beings it supports—has taught me how to pray)
has taught me magic)
The repetition of this place has helped me feel myself as a creature)
I have come to understand myself more intimately)
more deeply)
with what surrounds me, seen and unseen)
it sharpens my ability to discern)
to hear)
to attend to what wants to come through)
and time)
The work develops in its own time)
This is devotion)
experience)
the work of living)
of ritual)
Connections as Liberation Magic
A Conversation)
absorption and)
transformation of another)
in the same vein)
sentence)
What if we ask: How do we share?)
Tending, cleaning, feeding, arranging, praying, constructing, listening, lifting, heaving, moving for elders, for communities, for shrines, for spirits, for myself)
to string together experiences)
to form a sense of continuity)
Magic to break open the possibility of limitless elegant solutions)
and dynamic, poignant change)
a lifetime creating constellations inside memories)
smoke-filled)
piled with charms)
how do you name the magic, prayers, breath?)
My magic is a continuation)
Every work keeps coming back to us)
magic-talk)
how that feels)
the Medicines of centers and peripheries)
how Spirit pours charm)
anything told anybody was gonna bring luck)
inspiration)
Spirit)
it was about connections to the people)
Everything had a narrative)
a story)
a spirit)
go and talk to them)
curate inward connection)
the relationality between moments)
connection)
community)
everybody within the space)
connections with people who for no other reason would be together)
connectivity)
inherently connected to the ingredients)
the time)
the spirit of whats going on at that moment)
engaging the world at the Crossroads)
an emanation tied to our experience)
that community ritual)
meeting ground)
the lasting effects of humans upon the planet)
divinities found in our remains)
A spell or incantation)
vibrating)
resounding)
transforming)
Beingness)
You create your own contradictions)
Hold antithesis)
to both separate and bring together)
the relationship of the will to the materials)
different energies; creativity to play as language)
What inspires myself?)
Dissolution and coagulation)
second tongued-ness)
no longer translatable into everyday profundity)
expresses in Spirit what you cant say in the physical)
poesis)
breaking into and out of, and also the in-between)
a crossroads of when everything, every good, bad, everything in between the spectrum of life)
How do you really sit there?
The language at that place where anything and everything is possible)
It achieves itself)
after midnight, witchcraft is a path to enlightenment)
separate illusion from reality)
Black, Indigenous, and Brown bodies, women’s bodies, gender non-conforming bodies, trans bodies, working-class bodies, queer bodies, are the historical perpetrators of witchcraft)
threatening, powerful, and able to upend reality)
hold and celebrate their people thriving)
liberation magic is a magic of transgression, a magic that divests the colonizer)
my emancipation)
a personal need, combating real-world oppression)
what are we doing and what are we working toward?
creation)
Creation)
magic of narrative)
looking and seeing what is, versus just the story)
it breaks the confines, magic)
magic has to be about bringing this information to the people)
how powerful our magic needs to be, because of imperialism and capitalism and white supremacy)
But we existed before all that)
There are so many ancestors who did not live in that world)
We don’t have to step back there, we actually get to bring it forward)
Here With Mother Web
Tarrying spirits laboring while gathered in the living room)
Rocking back and forth, side to side)
the sanctuary was here and here and right here)
the matter of spirit was the flesh)
Stay with me.
The whoops stream in prayer)
peppermint)
sticky & sweet)
the laying of hands, anointing in each fire)
a conduit)
a lightning rod calling spirit)
to dwell with us)
to be with us)
the time is good)
When Mother Web shouts “I don’t look like what I’ve been through!”)
May it forever stay with me as an affirmation that material violence even when not registered as glyphs upon the flesh leaves signs in the psyche and spirit)
The Hush)
The Trembling)
The Rumble and Creak in rhythm)
The tip of tongue to the roof of mouth)
In the sanctuary by the river, flesh, elements, and spirit are inextricably linked)
read the signs)
make the Divine)
Divine)
Perceiving the imperceptible)
making the realms of the material and immaterial)
making kinship with)
your neighbor)
the night)
the clay)
knowing a drought’s hunger in my voice)
my dreams)
In the dream I have dozens of eyes
Show it a new perspective
fresh air in the waking world
a lilting refrain of “can you make a little space for me?”
Share with me where grief resides
Black matrilineal grief alchemy glimmering and following me
A new perspective
piercing—tingling, twinkling
Stay with me. I won’t be with you long.
Divine)
Make a covenant to draw forth that which has been deliberately destroyed)
Effaced)
Subjugated)
The geography, behavior, between the lines of what was spoken and left unspoken, your own intuition)
that it had been taken and kept away)
old haunts set to return among the trees)
the forest)
parallel to the path)
but always keeping it in sight)
Waiting)
Waiting)
whistling a melody made in childhood)
kept and hidden from you)
Intervene in the anti-Black, patriarchal, capitalist, ableist problem as a problem)
Making a covenant with the made-hidden, the subjugated)
making a commitment to pierce beyond reality)
reach for the possibilities beyond those structures)
toward the survival of yourself and your kin)
within a constellation of Black covenants)
that which has been subjugated)
liberation is rendered invisible)
nonexistent under colonial modernity)
freedom seekers we do not know)
hidden from us)
Draw from the stars)
dreams)
fire shut up in your bones)
liberation)
possible)
transmit this knowledge through a multiple of ways)
sing songs to read{
constellations,
signs of liberation otherwise obscured on earth,
about themselves,
the ceremonial survivances}
breathing together)
conspire)
My ancestral inheritance)
survival and being)
oral culture issued from my forebears’ throats)
issued from my own)
flesh-spun spells)
choreopoems embedded with instructions of{
where to move,
how to move,
when to move in concert with your kindred to get free)
Make oneself a conduit)
align flesh, language, and ancestors)
focus and accumulate energy)
beyond the fold)
potentiated into actualization)
Turn language into an edge)
conspire)
signal to others)
radical possibility and mutual liberation)
echolocation)
I’m right here. I want you. Here. With me. To live free.
The magic is not the intercession themselves)
the magic lies in the signal)
the possible we do together)
How does one craft through the chatter?)
Widen the pockets of possibility?
the multiplicity in meaning?
That inevitable fate about becoming)
that this world can’t take away)
liberation made possible by our kindred in a world that did take away our freedom)
What shall you do?
push beyond them)
Stay with me now.
And what shall we do)
thick with interpretation)
a magic of revelation)
a magic of distraction)
covenants with the subjugated)
when might we be in collusion with the powers that obscure, hide, efface, and subjugate?)
The violence of anti-Blackness and capitalism that we must resist)
revealing some transformative truth)
magics are increasingly important)
to pierce through our oppression and reveal our liberation)
decolonizing the settler colony that occupies the land)
to put an end to continuing oppression)
anti-Blackness must end for ALL of us to know true liberation)
riots and uprisings in the face of the police murdering Black people)
these nonverbal choreopoems as a revelatory, embodied language)
So many possibilities)
So much discernment)
Stay with me. Please.
It’s here at this edge, this possibility that I’m calling out to you at this particular crossroads)
I’m calling out to you to meet me.
To shape the words, the songs, the choreopoems that might seem like just another death chorus)
But to you, a whisper in a register against your skin)
that heat of breath on your flesh)
a surging chorus of aliveness)
you recognize the song of liberation gloriously stolen back by kindred.
Can you catch it?
Stay with me.
Because none of this can stay the same.
Breathe with me.
Conspire.
We ain’t got long to stay here.
Weave, Finish, Apotheosize
There is a ritual not really spoken of)
What can be shared is that certain things occur, Energies are called forth)
Hidden)
vague)
all a person)
the ritual themself)
It will be talked about, all allusion and innuendo, not quite a secret)
the sacred communities seem exclusive)
But can be wonderfully endearing)
a passing down from elders, its own ritual)
honoring power summoned with the mysteries, and opening room for them in space and time)
We believe in the potency of human intention to create, at its most distilled and most powerful)
spellcasting)
Dear workers of words and magic and change, shifting and pulsing with mystery)
wind around one meaning)
shed into a new interpretation)
To play
to pray
to dance with the spirits
So here)
What we know)
offered reconsiderations)
All transformation requires radical imagination)
Radical imagination arises in a container that can shift, morph, and adapt to hold an ever-expanding shape)
remember the nexus)
to manifest change and transformation)
draw our attention to a willingness)
a pathway)
a space)
our communities)
what is)
Illuminate a transformative practice as we deepen our capacity to relate to ourselves, our genders, our lineages, and our communities)
Summon communal connection, a subversion of the isolation wrought by colonialism and capitalism)
This nexus can be activated to recognize temporality, to recognize possibility)
Enchantment)
moments as embodied collapses of space and nonlinear experiences of time)
a sense more expansive than how we’ve been conditioned to experience space and time)
Hold gently the intricacies)
prayer as a way to attune)
to lean into the spaces that cultivate what is generative and creative)
deepening the power-building possibilities of our attention)
the more-than-human)
the interdependence)
chronicles form vital, sacred exchanges in the midst of a swirling undercurrent in this realm)
an ancestral inheritance reveals how our material and immaterial are inextricably intertwined)
in order to transform current structures, we need to access different ways of knowing and different ways of being)
we will need to collaborate{
with the living
with our dead
our ancestors
unseen forces
we call the Divine
Poetry and magic are necessary tools in societal transformation)
transformation may include other forms)
intuition)
ancestors)
gods)
possibility)
on these road-opening paths we dare to call forth)
liberation)
be present to Black feminist survivals that pierce through the confines of the known as they are shaped by the infinitude of what is love and its kindred grief)
We receive possibilities)
glimmerings)
transformation)
a disruption that cracks open beyond language)
a place beyond words, a space of symbols and images)
gestures and movement)
light and shadow, moving between memory and home)
in the face of brutal displacement via ongoing settler colonization)
the place of our deepest knowings, Divine)
In a spiralic dance)
summoning transformation requires being deliberate in reclaiming our own voices as we seek to actualize what we have radically imagined)
we must move to language that has a capacity to stay with liminality, where magic is potentiated)
reclaim potency and create a collective revolutionary power)
The structures, systems, and dominant cu;tures of the US are not tenable. Built on rotten foundations of genocide and slavery, settler colonialism and imperialism, exploitation and extraction, they never served the majority of people and creatures on this land)
we cannot continue in this world build by unspeakable brutality, colonization, anti-Blackness, and its attendant capitalist catastrophes)
recall a world that makes space for, respects the dignity of, and promotes the thriving of all peoples and creatures. A world that honors and is guided by our ancestors. A world rooted in the deep wisdom, experience, knowledge, and liberation of Black folks, Indigenous people, people of color, trans women, trans men, nonbinary people, cisgender women, queer people, neurodivergent people, and disabled people)
We can use a poem as an activating ritual)
to ourselves)
our communities)
our planet)
to summon, to cast, a new world into being)
We have begun to unwind story, and we have begun to unwind the limits of whose story, why that story, and how a story gets to be told. In doing so, we have sought to reclaim the immensely powerful tools of change we have access to: voice, imagination, embodiment, efficacy, and sovereignty)
closer to transformation and liberation of ourselves, our community, and our world
weave a tapestry of mystery and healing
of poetry
of spellwork
This is your invitation{
Silence in the Ward
Awakening
There is always a choice between the path of uncertainty, and the path of mediocrity. Between chance and stagnation. It is a choice you have to make and make over and over again.
Personally, I believe in taking the most uncertain path, regardless of how it works out for me in the end. You cannot grow if you sit in place until all your resources are depleted and you wither in your own paucity.
Everyone deserves the chance to grow, to change, to become something anew.
For me, the initial ritual was three years after I came out, another trans woman filling my body with glyphs and runes, to “unlock me” and my potential. Others have their own stories of coming into change – sometimes a ritual of an earth-rending word or two, sometimes a period of years.
Only you determine what you become. They will try to rewrite your story without your consent, without truly knowing it, but let your story ring true from your throat, from your hand, from your being unto your dying breath.
You have your invitation, but what you do now is the most important part.
May your story always come back to the truth.