Hello loved ones!
Welcome to Resurrection Sunday, #2 of our 21 week series
in honour of black lesbian warrior poet icon exemplar, chosen ancestor, Audre Lorde.
So, today we're gonna be working with a much less known poem by Audre Lorde about survival.
The poem is called "Prologue",
and in "Prologue", Audre Lorde is addressing
some narrow definitions of blackness
in her chosen community of black arts poets
that is so hard and so deep
that she actually embodies and takes on subjectivity of a vampire
in order to say what she needs to say.
So I think this poem is amazing and strange and weird,
which is probably why people don't read it so much;
and, you can see how I think about this poem and how I see it as a precedent
and as sort of a foundation for black queer futurism and black feminist vampire fiction
in this book, "The Black Imagination". Check it out.
OK. So, here is "Prologue", from Audre Lorde's 1973 book "From A Land Where Other People Live".
"Haunted by poems beginning with I
seek out those I love who are deaf
to whatever does not destroy
or curse the old ways that did not serve us
while history falters and our poets are dying
choked into silence by icy distinction
their death rattles blind curses
and I hear even my own voice becoming
a pale strident whisper
At night sleep locks me into an echoless coffin
sometimes at noon I dream
there is nothing to fear
now standing up in the light of my father sun
without shadow
I speak without concern for the accusations
that I am too much or too little woman
that I am too black or too white
or too much myself
and through my lips come the voices
of the ghosts of our ancestors
living and moving among us
Hear my heart's voice as it darkens
pulling old rhythms out of the earth
that will receive this piece of me
and a piece of each one of you
when our part in history quickens again
and is over:
Hear
the old ways are going away
and coming back pretending change
masked as denunciation and lament
masked as a choice
between eager mirrors that blur and distort us
in easy definitions
until our image
shatters along its fault
while the other half of that choice
speaks to our hidden fears with a promise
that our eyes need not seek any truer shape--
a face at high noon particular and unadorned--
for we have learned to fear
the light from clear water might destroy us
with reflected emptiness or a face without tongue
with no love or with terrible penalties
for any difference
and even as I speak remembered pain is moving
shadows over my face, my own voice fades and
my brothers and sisters are leaving;
Yet when I was a child
whatever my mother thought would mean survival
made her try to beat me whiter every day
and even now the colour of her bleached ambition
still forks throughout my words
but I survived
and didn't I survive confirmed
to teach my children where her errors lay
etched across their faces between the kisses
that she pinned me with asleep
and my mother beating me
as white as snow melts in the sunlight
loving me into her bloods black bone--
the home of all her secret hopes and fears
and my dead father whose great hands
weakened in my judgement
whose image broke inside of me
beneath the weight of failure
helps me to know who I am not
weak or mistaken
my father loved me alive
to grow and hate him
and now his grave voice joins hers
within my words rising and falling
are my sisters and brothers listening?
The children remain
like blades of grass over the earth and
all the children are singing
louder than mourning
all their different voices sound like a raucous question
but they do not fear the blank and empty mirrors
they have seen their faces defined in a hydrants' puddle
before the rainbows of oil obscured them.
The time of lamentation and curses is passing.
My mother survives now
through more than chance or token.
Although she will read what I write with embarrassment
or anger
and a small understanding
my children do not need to relive my past
in strength nor in confusion
nor care that their holy fires
may destroy
more than my failures
Somewhere in the landscape past noon
I shall leave a dark print
of the me that I am
and who I am not
etched in the shadow of angry and remembered loving
and their ghosts will move
whispering through them
with me none the wiser
for they will have buried me
either in shame
or in peace.
And the grasses will still be
Singing."
So, there is so much in that poem,
and it is amazing to work with that poem,
and its vampire queerness, this weekend,
after an amazing Octavia Butler Parable of The Sower potluck this weekend,
and after our all day poetry retreat here in Durham,
working with some of Lucille Clifton's most mystical poems.
But for me, what is so brave and incredible about this poem,
is that there is this challenge of: what does it mean to be alive?
What does it mean for our words to survive,
when we launch our words into a community that may or may not be ready to hear them?
And we feel that we may be excluded from the communities we love.
We feel like we may die if we speak the truth that we need to speak.
And so Audre Lorde becomes un-dead, becomes vampire,
speaking about this fear of reflection,
the fear of the abundance of our reflection of each other.
And I think it's incredible
that she makes that space through the use of the vampire and the un-dead,
and the multiple generations,
to do the work of healing the internalized racism within her own family.
Her mother survives in her poem.
She projects that she will survive,
into this moment past whatever we are projecting onto her.
She leaves a dark print of who she is, and who she is not.
Whooo!
I love it!
It's Sunday, I could talk about this all day.
But what I want to assign us to do
is to speak that truth that we are afraid to speak.
Like, that we really feel that we will be rejected unto death if we share in the communities we love,
and to share it, to make the space to share it,
because we know that the future deserves a present where our truths were spoken.
Where our reflection was brave.
Ah! Hmm! Mmm! Praise the lord!
And, because it's Resurrection Sunday,
I read this poem 26 times today,
really reflecting and meditating
on what were the words that Audre Lorde used that started with the letter "A",
or started with the letter "B",
and I pulled out a new poem from the words that she used starting with the letter "R",
especially as a blessing for us on Resurrection Sunday.
And... here it is:
So these are the words in the order that they appear in the poem that start with the letter "R".
"rattles, rhythms, receive, reflected, remembered,
rising, remain, remain, raucous,
rainbows, read, relive, remember."
Even the mini-poems inside her poems are like the best poems ever.
So, if you want a special poem from Prologue dedicated to you or someone that you love,
as a School of Our Lorde blessing to you and the truth that you need to speak,
check us out on the School of Our Lorde website:
And that can happen! That can happen.
And until next time, happy Resurrection Sunday.
May Audre Lorde live on, through our actions, through our boldness, through our braveness,
through our love.
Mwah!