Kai Lumumba Barrow: Nomad Approaches

Training
(for Kai)
if fun house mirrors
and loose sunk chains
could speak out loud
and scratch toward move

if curled archives
stacked under urgency
colored in spilled desire
were on display

if brown maps
stretched directions
of more than now
of sticky lifting
left calling cards

if revolution
had a whole car tag
a muralled rush

i could hear that
i could see it
i could recognize all of it
trained in the practice
of knowing you

**********

Critical Resistance is one of the many places that Kai makes revolution.

Nia/Mama Nancy

Nia
(for Mama Nancy)

your face is a playground
for things that grow
or that want to
and
your hands are gardens
for all that flies

your cheekbones are support beams
for everything fierce
everything wild
that tends toward love

i think your arms
must be passageways
to homes thought impossible
to marooned desires

i think your skin shares
a freckled map
of endless mines
of water prepped
for communal baptism

********
Nancy is Director of SpiritHouse

Zelda Lockhart: LeVenson Press

for Zelda
there shines an opening
there wakes an up
the way you listen
towards projectile laughter

there rings a grace
there steps a peace
the way you walk
towards a world
that pushes description
that requires us all

there sighs a simplicity
there holds a growing
the way you build
a today and a today and a today

there hands a warning
there ices a blessing
the way you carve out
grooves and sweaters for love

*************

Learn more about Zelda and LaVenson Press here

Karla Holloway

Composure
(for Karla Holloway)

if hope made fabric
like its own style of weaving
like the thick strength of soft
you'd be wearing it

if grace published dance steps
like shoeprints to keep going
like a sure turn to here
you'd be walking it

if beauty released a soundtrack
like bone structured bass-line
or a stretched sketch in ink
you'd be humming it

and
if bright put on a light show
with a symphony of leaves
and a resevoir of stays
i'd guess that you had
composed it.

Nana Nantambu

for Mama Nana

there is an open hand
waking a stretched goatskin
to the pulse of a
braceletted writst somewhere

there is a woven melody
a taut stability in
the wandering confidence
of a frictioned sole somewhere

there is a strained pattern
and a round stregnth
a holding quality
in a crafted connection somewhere

and rich spilling
a well arriving
a deep blessing
right here now