Michelle Lanier: Ribald Farming

for Michelle Lanier

angels stain the air
when you reach for words
made rounder by
the soil you trace
for roots

and birds sound the calling
to splash light
intentionful
to water what knows
you are home

so i'll curl a streamer
i'll smooth a mound
i'll balance a birthing gourd
meaning I will cultivate grace daily
so they'll know
i heard you

Afiya Carter: Experiment

for Afiya

if a lunge had bells
or if the universe was made
from the bright small buttons
of air popping off
everytime your hand explained

if a house had glass precision walls
saved just for the breeze
and the never-could-be-known
had a pet door to use

if museums
and publicly specialized community
had cheerleaders trained
in the backdrop of threedom

in other words
if this were all
a science project
(so to speak)
an experiment
meant to be lived
then
I would sit
in a corner of the classroom
where I could watch you
and change my mind

Wahneema Lubiano: All My Affect

for Wahneema

attention gains wings
outfits
land
from the way you listen

like a magnetic lift
a secret spring
that firms eye contact
into a place to be

what was glass ceiling
becomes sturdy
to rest books on
past our reach

or foam legos
get born out
your phrases
placing each into
soft frames for knowing

in other words
i was never going to stay
with one metaphor
so thanks
for building
the slide

Wahneema Lubiano is a Professor of African and African American Studies, Literature and Women's Studies at Duke University. She is also the author and in person speaker of words that will blow your mind everytime. Despite all of this, she is the most generous teacher I have met.

This Survivor: A Spelling Lesson

A Spelling Lesson

for this and every survivor

drop
is a four-letter word
an instruction after catching fire
a movement behind stop
a command we must memorize
and tell ourselves
if we would be safe

drop
is what we do to the kids
at school, at practice, at auntie's
training for a next that will keep them (running)
warning that they will not be at home anywhere
treason required by our other jobs

drop
is what the dj plays
what the hypeman says
the entrance of the beat(ing)
stretching our skin like a place to call
drowning our knees like a new heartbeat

and today
drop
is what my stomach does
is a frame for the rain
is the shape of the blood
that would seek to be the last word
as if we weren't students as well

but we know how to spell

so when i see D-R-O-P
dropped open in front of me
like it was new(s)
all i do is add you
all of bright breaking you
all of impossibly speaking
light leaking
you

and the next word is yours

P-R-O-U-D

love always,
alexis

Tina Campt: Hard Core

for Tina Campt

you make me think
it might be appropriate
to brainstorm with chisels
to rock-climb bare-handed
to say what i mean

when you look up
and nod forward
it's a head-butt to the last thought
and a measured faith in a desired now

as if you intend
abundant stones
to stand on
to test
to break through
to shape down to movement

like spinning a record
but much more
(hard core)

mama audre: generate (light)

for audre lorde (to be whispered in hurricane season)

mama audre
how did you no
facing gale
force consent

to plant letters
like collard seeds
who new how
to ride wind
dispersing into
breath?

who did you
make
a line less birth
certificate
tracing from
Grenada
to St. Croix
to New Orleans
a bee-line
designed to clog machinge guns
an oracle
fashioned from scraps
of cloth and ink?

"i wish
you were living

(up the road)"

and
i
no
that
you
are
********************
Basic information on Audre Lorde

Loving Audre

Born in June

to June (Jordan)

either the accident of my birth
starts in the miracle of your name
or the intention my word
lives in the groove of the same

laugh
and
say
both

and else you brave vulnerability
leaves me soaking in salt
then each essay builds trapeezes
for my heart to sing

and again you
shake your head
both

thus from an honest body
choosing anything now
light define of alive

i say "yes"
and know

***************
Studying June

Phillis Wheatley: Something Like Seance

The Difficult Miracle (where June Jordan meets Phillis Wheatley)

"the girls" @ rendezvous

for "the girls" @ rendezvous bay hotel

the first time
i heard it
i thought
sucking your teeth
was practice for wrappers
training for candy
calling for sweet

but i quickly learned
the taste of my mother's hand
and
that learning too well
her disappointment
reflecting too eagerly
her pain
was punishable
by force

so i readied my mouth
for the audacity of this day
with silent preparations
on indented pens

but now
i think i may
have been righter
the first time

because
in the lips of some
in the mid-afternoon
that selfsame sound
in surreal slow motion
zips the air out of place
shreds rank into streamers
and tears open the veil
between this world
and the one
we'd rather have anyway

*************
The Scene

Emma and Aiden: "That Whole Drag Queen Thing..."

for Aiden and Emma

if i could make a hammock
out of round shrugs and hat brims
i would snuggle into hands-free salute
heads up to lay down
smooth burdens of afternoon

or if i could fit a bridge
of sanded growth
into the spiraling knarl of always
i would shift there now
so you could stand

but since you give me
a stomach light
with loosened ribbon
open with escaping breeze

since you give me
a life-line for unraveling
right from the base
of my hair trees

i will send electric curves
into space around
so air can hug you
if i am far away

Farah Jasmine Griffin: Visionary Tendencies

for Farah Jasmine Griffin

it could be
that bright paper
intentional folds
and stolen staples
are deceptively long term
propellers that
wing awake in our chests

it could be
that sound has its own
sweepstake calculus
that listening is the prize
when our eyes
close

it could be
that teaching is a faith
in rebirth
not through a doctrine
of more selves
but in rays of growth
frames of reflection

and
it could be
that I had
already known
all of these things
somehow

but it is
necessary
to say it

it is crucial
to say

that the first time
i heard
and recognized
each of those
truths

it was you
who was speaking

Ileana Mendez-Penate: Relational

for Ily

they say
that the poet
writes only of herself
reflected back
in moments of watching

how much more true then
when the one beheld
is related
through intentional
alignments
made coincident
in institutional predicaments
of discovery and costume

you have
made believable
a practice
of expression
where every possibility
has a landing
of embrace

you justify
a refashioning a faith
that even i
could make sense
or be clothed
or even maybe
live
as myself

Paula Ximena Rojas-Urrutia: Acrobatic Doula

for Paula

if every word ended
with the letter "a"
(or at least all the
important ones)
i might assume
that it had been
by your design

i imagine
that its part
of your strategy
to leave us
with our mouths open
facing each other

or maybe part of the plan
is to make us
more likely to exhale
ready to let go
the knowledge
that keeps our faces
closed

because a sigh
is not a scream
is not an
incantatory
aria
but you may already believe
that how we say
will be various

so i think
you have made
and earned
and required
a choir
where love
sounds like
la

***************
See the beautiful work of SistaIISista (an organization that Paula helped to found)

Deborah Small: Break the Chains

for Deborah

like rubber-souled
stairsteps
or gavels with ridges
your voice builds
platforms
thick enough
for rollerskates

and in rhythm
with the last sigh
of the first bus home
your hand pulls
the seal
off the waiting punch-line
for the joke we're living

as a curled up
surprise for a
world in the wings
and a secret passageway
to the part of the story
when all the walls fall down

so
i know what happens
when a link bursts open
and steel reveals
its internal edges

i can see
the mosaic
of rubble painted clear
so I know what it means
the Deborah is here

every break
every chip
every slip
and mistake

gets a new life
and smoothed space
to grow

****************
Learn more about Deborah's organization Break the Chains (

Monica Miller: (Not) A Moment of Arrival

for Monica Miller

imagine landing
through some accidental decisions
on a ground of blossoms
dispersed upward in peals

or try
pushing yourself forward
finding that doorways
have names and gifts
that unstring
the need for striving

or maybe
there is a sharp
upward note
asymptote of conclusion
that when projected
with a hand to frame
wins everything
before wanting

what i mean to say is
when i wrote this
i was sitting
in the place i sat
at the moment
i decided
to go to the school
where i never knew
i would meet you

so therefore
miracles
are

Aurelia Sands Belle: Durham Crisis Response Center

i think your
voice box must be
a sand dollar
thin solid patterns
impressions
openings
fluting your name
in chorus

so when i think
of your desk
i think it should be
somehow coastal
strung with chimes
out of doors
and always spring

but even i
don't expect this
to be true
so my second place vison
(no contest)
for your seat of influence
is through a door
which leads through
another door
which lads to a room
with a small window
and unchosen orange
and leather worn from
various listenings

it occurs to me
that every building
is inadequate
to the delicacy
of your work
and no hourglass
contains the urgency
of your days
and no existing outfit
is appropriate to your task

or even my imagination
blown as it is into
stained glass visions
of guessing
cannot do (you) justice

****************
Durham Crisis Response Center

Alisha Gaines: Shuck n Strategy

for Alisha

Clearly

clearly
some of us
were made
for TV

some of us
can animate
the mundane

some of us
speak flat spaces
into declarative
remixing ruts
into interrogatives

some of us
open our hands
so minstrel spirits
fall through
and recolor
the everyday making
of same

at least one us
clearly

Treva Lindsey: Historicizing Creativity (and recreating History)

for Treva

glamour
has a code
rhythm-based
like morse

urgent
like the bottom
of a hard-spoken
tone

critique
fortifies itself
with costumes
such that
the visual
beomes lyrical
allusion

to the song
yet to be
penned

or the dance
we should be
stretching for

all ready

Aisha Peay: A Critical Attitude

for Aisha


i think you carve

your statements

into iron

round and solid

sounds of knowing


or maybe you shake

sand and gravel

through hardcover wings

firmly out towards yes


i would call you

a subtle detective

or a calm and self-sufficient

rescue mission

looking for what


i believe

we all

need

bravery supplements (shortwave listenings Feb 2007)

Jennifer Brody (Northwestern)
Cynthia Brown (Greensboro TRC)
Sharon Holland (Northwestern)
Fred Moten (USC)
Aishah Simmons
Monica Dillon
Johnetta Cole (Bennett)
Valerie Kaalund (Bennett)
Marianne Hirsch (Columbia)
Wahneema Lubiano (Duke)
Mark Anthony Neal (Duke)
Charles Piot (Duke)
Pedro Lasch (Duke)
Diane Nelson (Duke)
Maurice Wallace (Duke)



So the English Department has just had a search for senior African Americanists. This is a very very good thing, not just because it would be great to have more people in our department who are absolutely brilliant about my interest, but also because it provided me the opportunity to listen to Jennifer Brody, Sharon Holland and Fred Moten explain and demonstrate their approaches to African American Studies at exactly the moment (my exams are in 1 month!) that I am thinking hardest about what kind of scholar I want to be. In addition, the African and African American Studies Department held a a town hall meeting entitled "Shut Up and Teach?" in response to the hateful threats that faculty members at Duke have been getting due to their stances against sexism, racism, sexual violence, and oppression more generally during the increased visibility brought on by the Lacross team scandal.

So I get the message. Now (as always) is the time for me to think and rethink and be accountable for my relationship to the Universe(city) (a formulation that I first saw...after writing it...on the cover of re)magazine @ Columbia..but which Fred Moten also deployed in a conversation last week). The general message is this: Alexis BE as BRAVE as YOU ARE!

So Jennifer Brody in the first of these talks seemed to be about as brave as I already am. Her talk was affirming in that she (see my earlier shortwave listening comments about Judith Butler and the scene of address) took care to directly address her audience..and seemed to be a very good reader of us, and of what may have been socially expected at her (though when I asked her about her process of reading us..she avoided the question). Witnessing J-Bro's constant and prodigious and almost unbelievable social readings and the resultsit produced makes me think about my own practice of social reading. Do I want to by the type of reader that shape-shifts to fit into the ways that I am interpellated within a university or departmental context? Do I need to strategically cheerlead the existing process into which I may be assimilable? Or do I want to reflect those expectations in a different and more risky way? Does the practice of reading my environment need to be a reproductive act in that I give the image back to the giver and name myself into the family line or is there a way to read and be responsible to every environment while still making and empahsizing the more multi-sited approach that I have (developed the difference I want to make)?

Sharon Holland is braver and more brazen that I am. She is comfortable with the shared and exchangeable terms that the academy values. Even though it's Jennifer Brody's talk that was actually about a sculptor (afro-native woman loving Edmonia Lewis)Holland seemed to actual perform some kind of dexterous ability to manipulate a wide range of ideas with a passion that I found contagious. She made me want to be braver and more confident in my ideas.

Fred Moten (if this is all relational...which it is) reminded me of some of the content that resonates with that bravery for me. And it is interesting that I use the word content because for me theoretical bravery has a lot to do with form...with a poetic approach to theorization that actually dwells in the literature it engages in and experiments with the language in which it is and is not possible to describe the logics we live. Something, in other words. Something far beyond the expectations of simple argument and persuasion and mastery that I cannot afford (because of the mastery and enslavement that it reproduces). And it is important to note that this is not only an approach to words themselves (though of course Moten i a noted poet) it is also an approach to the structure of the Universe(city) which hE acknowledges as appropriated resources that belong to the people...and we are the leaks through which they get the power of these resources back.




And of course the AAS faculty and African Americanist English Faculty that is at Duke already attracted and selected these thinkers in the first place. Which reminds me that though I look for unscholarly refuge (say by listeningto former councilwoman and member of the Greensboro Truth and Reconcilation Council responding to the racist murders of community organizers, there is ample bravery to be found (so ironically as I mentioned to Kriti this week) in this unlikely and strangely seductive yet barely tolerable place called the university.

Wahneema Lubiano almost brought me to tears during the shut up and teach session with her passionate reminders of our successes. Of the fact that we don't need to look to the media for what our success is...because they will not represent it...because it is just THAT powerful. In Wahneema's definition BlackStudies (oneword...i'd like to think...like the title of Audre Lorde's poem) is homeless and Moten affirms this. BlackStudies is never complete and was created by students and is and must be always critical. (Citing Bambara and Spillers among others). It is clear to me that Wahneema creates the context in which creative critique is possible...is (to also paraphrase Bambara) irresistible.

*here i should note that this past thursday i...along with the rest of the artistic response crew spent a miraculous day at Bennett College while they hosted Aishah Simmons and Monica Dillon. Aishah Simmons (besides her gracious shout out of UBUNTU) also mentioned that Audre Lorde (through spirit and poetry) and Toni Cade Bambara (in person) were the women who let her know her brilliance and means. So it is infinitely appropriate that we performed an arrangement of Lorde's Litany for Survival and it is is appropriate that Wahneema calls on Bambara's words and style to create the space and the demand for critique and community building in the academy.

So Charles Piot gave a reflection of the blog of one particular vector of hate towards the 88 faculty member who spoke out in support of students andagainst the repression and silencing of issues of sexual violence. Mark Anthony created a genalogy of black public intellectuals (co-produced by each other and the times in which they lived) who will use alterntive and mass media forms to "fight fire with fire."

Pedro Lasch and Diane Nelson peformed the relationships that they envisioned. Lasch created a series of questions about power, knowledge, fear and love that he hopes will generate more questions (and if the Q&A session which lasted almost an hour is any evidence his performance was effective) and Nelson solicited audience participation to read about the repression of intellectuals during the CIA sponsored Civil War in Guatamala and performend interconnection by having some of her graduate students give loops of string to people of the audience. The point is that our connection to each other is dangerous, embattled, and necessary.

*Nelson's presentation which looked at the terms "articulate" "disarticulate" and "inarticulate" to investigate the politics of speech in resistance also connected to a (anthro department sponsored) talk by Columbia University's Mariane Hirsch who writes about the transmission of holocaust survivor memories across generations (her generation is self-identified as the "hinge" generation).



Maurice Wallace got specific about the types of connections that we need in a very author as producer kind of way, pointing out the participation of professors in the service economy of alienated laborin the university..the excesses of which are constantly policed through a process that includes divisions between support staff, faculty and students. He also presented brilliant anaylsis (alongside Mark Anthony Neal's emphasis of the multiple publics that black intellectuals speak into)of the ways in which we are constituted by and IN public...the ways in which our race, gender and sexuality are already public issues. So what would it mean if we did NOT speak in public about public issues?

What indeed? Thank the universe(city) for making it possible for me to hear my name called so variously and with with such grace.