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Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday Sisters in Arms

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    Hello loved ones...
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    welcome back to Resurrection Sunday.
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    I have been away for two Sundays in Cuba,
    and I missed you, and now I am back.
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    And it is... um... Cuba was amazing.
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    I felt like I met some awesome people,
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    and built black feminist transnational solidarity,
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    and I'm also really missing
    those folks who I met,
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    and feeling the distance that's not even
    as much geographic distance
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    as it is the distance that the
    US blockade against Cuba
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    imposes on those of us who would
    love each other across boundaries.
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    So... to help me and to help us think through
    this situation that I'm finding myself in,
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    as I'm back in the US, missing my folks in Cuba,
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    I am going to read Audre Lorde's poem
    "Sisters In Arms".
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    The edge of our bed was a wide grid
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    where your fifteen-year-old daughter was hanging
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    gut-sprung on police wheels
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    a cablegram nailed to the wood
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    next to a map of the Western Reserve
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    I could not return with you to bury the body
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    reconstruct your nightly cardboards
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    against the seeping Transvaal cold
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    I could not plant the other limpet mine
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    against a wall at the railroad station
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    nor carry either of your souls back from the river
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    in a calabash upon my head
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    so I bought you a ticket to Durban
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    on my American Express
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    and we lay together
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    in the first light of a new season.
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    Now clearing roughage from my autumn garden
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    cow sorrel
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    overgrown rocket gone to seed
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    I reach for the taste of today
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    the New York Times finally mentions your country
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    a half-page story
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    of the first white south african killed in the “unrest”
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    Not of Black children massacred at Sebokeng
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    six-year-olds imprisoned for threatening the state
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    not of Thabo Sibeko, first grader, in his own blood
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    on his grandmother’s parlor floor
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    Joyce, nine, trying to crawl to him
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    shitting through her navel
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    not of a three-week-old infant, nameless
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    lost under the burned beds of Tembisa
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    my hand comes down like a brown vise
    over the marigolds
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    reckless through despair
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    we were two Black women touching our flame
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    and we left our dead behind us
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    I hovered
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    you rose
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    the last ritual of healing
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    “It is spring,” you whispered
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    “I sold the ticket for guns and sulfa
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    I leave for home tomorrow”
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    and wherever I touch you
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    I lick cold from my fingers
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    taste rage
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    like salt from the lips of a woman
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    who has killed too often to forget
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    and carries each death in her eyes
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    your mouth a parting orchid
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    “Someday you will come to my country
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    and we will fight side by side?”
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    Keys jingle in the door ajar
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    threatening
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    whatever is coming belongs here
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    I reach for your sweetness
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    but silence explodes like a pregnant belly
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    into my face
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    a vomit of nevers.
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    Mmanthatisi turns away from the cloth
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    her daughters-in-law are dyeing
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    the baby drools milk from her breast
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    she hands him half-asleep to his sister
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    dresses again for war
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    knowing the men will follow.
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    In the intricate Maseru twilights
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    quick
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    sad
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    vital
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    she maps the next day’s battle
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    dreams of Durban
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    sometimes
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    visions the deep wry song of beach pebbles
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    running after the sea.
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    So... I love this poem.
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    And I think that it does a lot
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    to talk about the distance
    and what we can do for each other,
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    and how it sometimes doesn't seem like enough.
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    So, I'm dedicating this poem to the sisters that I met,
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    especially Gloria, Myrna, Dee-a-renice[SP?],
    Si-may[ASP?] and um...
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    My assignment for myself and for all of us
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    is to think about how we can reach across
    imposed borders, unjust borders,
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    and state violence
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    in order to hold each other in the way that we can,
    in the way that we deserve to hold and be held
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    as sisters, as comrades, as chosen siblings,
    as people
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    in solidarity across everything.
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    Again, if you want to see other videos,
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    or you want to learn about
    how you can get
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    a personalized, distilled,
    alphabetical version of this poem,
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    please go to the School of Our Lorde website
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    summerofourlorde.wordpress.com
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    And you can also learn a little bit more about,
    um, my trip to Cuba on that site.
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    OK. Sending love.
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    Happy Resurrection Sunday.
Title:
Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday Sisters in Arms
Description:

Launched on Nov. 17th 2013 on the 21st anniversary of Audre Lorde’s transition from an embodied warrior healer to an ancestral force, this is a weekly series of videos documenting and sharing my process of clarifying survival through a re-immersion in the words of Audre Lorde. To see all the videos so far check out: summerofourlorde.wordpress.com/resurrection-sundays/

This week's poem "Sisters in Arms" has been helping me think about solidarity with the sisters I met in Cuba now that I am back in the United States. The double meaning in the title refers to warrior sisters working together and also to the embrace or intimacy that we can offer each other and ourselves to heal each other and support our revolutionary journeys. Who are the sisters you want to embrace and stand up with this week?

Every week as part of my practice of resurrecting Audre Lorde in my life and in our communities I will be making an alphabetical oracle from the weekly survival poem which will consist of up to 26 new poems based on the sacred source text. If you would like to receive a custom poem as a blessing for your journey you can with a donation of your choice to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind’s School of Our Lorde! summerofourlorde.wordpress.com

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Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
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Video Language:
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Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday Sisters in Arms

English subtitles

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  • Revision 1 Edited (legacy editor)
    Radical Access Mapping Project
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