WEBVTT
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Hi, it's me, Sister Doctor Lex,
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and welcome to week 5
of Audre Lorde Resurrection Sundays.
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Can you believe we've already been doing this
for more than a month?
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Thanks for watching again.
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Right now, I am in Anguilla visiting my family,
and I am so happy to be here,
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and definitely feeling very close
to the energy of my ancestors
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and the divinity that I always feel
when I'm here.
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So this week's poem is called "Call",
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from Audre Lorde's 1986 collection
"Our Dead Behind Us".
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And she explains the name of the goddess that you will hear repeated in this poem,
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Aido Hwedo is the Rainbow Serpent,
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and also in this powm,
the name for all those ancient divinities
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whose names and faces have been forgotten.
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"Call
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Holy ghost woman
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stolen out of your name
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Rainbow Serpent
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whose faces have been forgotten
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Mother, loosen my tongue or adorn me
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with a lighter burden
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Aido Hwedo is coming.
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On worn kitchen stools and tables
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we are piecing our weapons together
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scraps of different histories
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do not let us shatter
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any altar
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she who scrubs the capitol toilets, listening
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is your sister's youngest daughter
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gnarled Harriet's anointed
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you have not been without honor
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even the young guerrilla has chosen
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yells as she fires into the thicket
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Aido Hwedo is coming.
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I have written your names on my cheekbone
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dreamed your eyes
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flesh my epiphany
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most ancient goddesses
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hear me enter
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I have not forgotten your worship
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nor my sisters
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nor the sons of my daughters
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my children watch for your print
in their labors
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and they say Aido Hwedo is coming.
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I am a Black woman turning
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mouthing your name as a password
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through seductions self-slaughter
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and I believe in the holy ghost mother
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in your flames beyond our vision
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blown light through the fingers of women
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enduring warring
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sometimes outside your name
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we do not choose all our rituals
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Thandi Modise winged girl of Soweto
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brought fire back home in the snout of a mortar
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and passes the word from her prison cell
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whispering Aido Hwedo is coming.
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Rainbow Serpent who must not go unspoken
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I have ottered up the safety of separations
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sung the spirals of power
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and what fills the spaces
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before power unfolds or flounders
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in desirable non-essentials
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I am a Black woman
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stripped down and praying
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my whole life has been an altar
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worth its ending
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and I say Aido Hwedo is coming.
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I may be a weed in the garden
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of women I have loved
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who are still trapped in their season
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but even they shriek
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as they rip burning gold from their skins
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Aido Hwedo is coming.
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We are learning by heart
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what has never been taught
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you are my given fire-tongued
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Oya Seboulisa Mawu Afrekete
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and now we are mourning our sisters
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lost to the false hush of sorrow
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to hardness and hatchets and childbirth
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and we are shouting
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Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer
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Assata Shakur and Yaa Asantewa
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my mother and Winnie Mandela
are singing in my throat
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the holy ghosts linguist
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one iron silence broken
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Aido Hwedo is calling
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calling
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your daughters are named
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and conceiving
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Mother loosen my tongue
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or adorn me
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with a lighter burden
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Aido Hwedo is coming.
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Aido Hwedo is coming.
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Aido Hwedo is coming."
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So of course, I love this poem.
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I love that this poem is about collective survival,
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about the survival of that black, feminine,
transformative, warrior spirit,
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divinely flowing through Audre Lorde of course,
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flowing through anyone who reembodies
and narrates this poem,
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flowing through, as she names, the sisters,
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the daughters, the sons of the daughters,
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even the closeted women who she loves and
who treat her like a weed in their garden,
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still, that energy moves through.
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And I am so grateful for the way that energy
can be with us,
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and the way this poem makes space
for that energy to move through
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as faith, as wisdom, as each of us.
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And speaking of South Africa, and clearing space,
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and black feminine transformative warrior divinity,
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and calling names,
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Gloria Joseph sent out a very timely and pointed email recently,
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asking from a black feminist perspective
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why is it, that as we honour
and uplift Nelson Mandela,
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and his recent transition to join the ancestors,
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the name Winnie Mandela
has been conspicuously absent,
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and has not been lifted up
in the way that it might be.
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And so in the spirit of honouring that inquiry,
which I think we could all think about,
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and lifting up the name of Winnie Mandela
as Audre Lorde does in this poem,
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I want to offer the Poem For The Letter W
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that I distilled when I was reading through,
working with this poem, 26 times.
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So this is the Poem For The Letter W.
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Woman whose worn
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we weapons without written worship
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watch woman women warring
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we winged word whispering
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who? what woman?
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whole worth weed women
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who? we
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what? we.
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we, Winnie Mandela."
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And your assignment this week
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is to call the names of those ancestrally present,
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those living, those who you intend to live one day,
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who will carry this warrior, transformative energy
that we so need in the times that we live in.
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So call the names of your own ancestors,
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call the names of the warriors you admire,
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call your own name in the mirror,
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this week, making space for that transformative energy that you may need,
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as a warrior in your own life,
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and that we certainly, collectively, need
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as those who have the stewardship
for carrying this energy forward
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among our species and on our planet.
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As always, I am so grateful to Audre Lorde
for giving us the space, giving us this poem
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as a ritual to bring that energy through.
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And I'm so happy to be able to share it with you.
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Please do check out the School of Our Lorde website
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and hit me up if you are interested
in having your own custom poem,
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or in working more with the energy of the Lorde,
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and... yes! I will see you next week,
from Anguilla again,
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on Resurrection Sunday.