By For Those That Rape and Colonize
(click here to view the live reading of this poem from Convocation 2020)
By Jessica Hairston ’22, MFA ’23
For Those That Rape and Colonize,
Earth and I are one in the same, to take hold of Earth, is to take hold of Me
I, the Black Woman, the oldest adage, has watched Herself, Earth, raped out of sanctity and auctioned as a commodity, to devolve from a house of worship to a house full of the things that haunt
For the sake of greed, at the mercy of those that lust and want
My body is the landscape of earth’s geography small scaled, in my truest essence, I exude an aura-ancient and avant
The top layers of my skin shelter thousands of fissures, wherein lies the word ‘opulence’, elucidated under the gaze of astronomical dawn
My melanin is so worldly, it’s the oldest decorum for an ancient ecosystem, the ‘Black Bod’
Wherever, I lay my body, plants blossom, the sun reveals herself, lost moons are found, ‘cause the Black Woman is Earth’s first reflection, her first confidant
My body is often everybody’s home, this wallpaper I live under, is as deep as indigo
By now, you should know, there is no reconciling Earth’s changing climate, when you still rape away the light of the blackest abodes
As my topical layers fade from opal to opaque, there’s a virus of those that rape and colonize that dims the light in me that glows
Earth came and cried to me the other day, actually she broke down in pain; she said, that she is dying quickly, that the time were living in is borrowed
So I cried right back, broken and in pain; I said, that I miss the days where brown skin was a gift, a legacy, inheritance, because now when I look at Earth, my reflection reveals to me my inherited death sentence, to be black is to have sorrow
Instead of innovate locally, you searched, pillaged, and conquered-globally
Now my lungs are like the atmosphere you created: breathless, dense, cloudy
My kidneys are as overburdened as our overpoliced inner cities
My energy is as depleted as our neglected rural communities
Honoring Earth, is honoring our collective health, ancient love, communal wealth, giving grace and saying please
My skin is so dark and full of shade, it’s outer-worldly
My skin is so black and pretty, it’s as extraterrestrial as our immeasurable galaxy
Home can’t have zipcodes, or borders, or stop where the sun can no longer be seen
Or where the sun sets and rises
Relinquish your entitlement, make sovereign the bodies you’ve commodified
Make sovereign the bodies you’ve raped and colonized
Live morally, live minimally, and watch alternatives manifest the extras in life, the things you’ve earned, the delicacies you still desire
Sincerely,
A Survivor
This is Not a Poem
(click here to view the live reading of this poem from Convocation 2020)
By Reilly Hirst, MPP ’21
This is not a poem
And I am not a poet
but that’s a story for another time
This is not a poem
The lines etched out against the long dark evening
And contrasting with the even longer day
This is not a poem
Moving against the injustice
Of a whitewashed euphoria
Trampling on the majority of the world
This is not a poem
A piece mouthing its words
About birds, specific birds
Like Wren, or Warbler or Cardinal
Against a misty dewy morning
This is not a poem
Declaring its love
The agony of your flesh
Contorting my will my desire
Deliciously reveling in flesh and fecundity
Or everlasting heavens
Illuminating our moment
In a tower
In a bedroom
By a stream
This is not a poem
Holding Us
Holding our hands
Into the dark night of doom
The scythe reaping souls faster than we can plant them
This is not a poem
Stopping the march of one million patients
Sewing the masks we wear
Against each other
Yearning for touch
This is not a poem
In this long long nightmare
Putting pennies away where dollars were spent
This is not a poem
As we hold each other tightly across
An expanse of thousands of miles
Via synapses and pixels
Or 6 feet whatever’s longer
This is not a poem
And that is not a sigh
Heard collectively round the world
Or a tear dripping from a statue
Whose large belly
And countenance
Seems at odds
This is not a Poem
There’s no promise
Or stop
Or silence
Or even distraction here
This is not a poem
It’s just our lives.
Pause for Love’s Sake
(click here to view the live reading of this poem from Convocation 2020)
By Sara Lahey ’22
Pause
Pause is powerful
So how do we respond to the day presented to us?
For so many reasons throughout history there have been moments that unified people
And others that divided people
Division seems so deeply rooted
And unification somehow so fragile
Right now we need undeniable unity and collaboration worldwide
Each of us are part of a collective direction of humanity
Everyone
This is a deeply humbling and powerful time
A time to pause
This is not a time to check out
But instead check in
And I ask myself, who do I want to be?
What should we do with the powerlessness we feel?
I say, pause
Inside each of us there’s a voice from the heart
Take a moment and listen
My heart says, I am not powerless and this is a great opportunity for a great new strength to be born in me
A deeper commitment to choosing to love my way through each day
I have the power to think positively, be thoughtful, act with kindness and consideration
To practice forgiveness, to use my courageous voice, and to practice generosity with myself and others
This is the most powerful revolutionary act we can do from exactly where we are
Love is our greatest resource
Love is everything
And I love you no matter what
