Two of my poems are featured in the beautiful collection themed "Voices of Dissent: Writing and Art to Transform the Culture" -- I wrote both of these pieces with resistance and radical transformation on my tongue and desire for social change and major shifts on my mind/heart/spirit -- making sense of and learning from we histories and herstories. May this collection and our shared creativity continue to offer space for reflection, questioning, sharing, and building the world we dream/imagine.
Here are my offerings:
*~*~*
Occupying Dissent Long Time
New York,
26 Oct 2011
Angelique V. Nixon
this new moon in october vibrates
through the echos of change, we want now
i obsess over websites, occupy blogs, live streams, and democracy
now
in between weekend visits to new york
join the people of color working group at occupy wall street
cause it’s the only space i feel at home in well-meaning whiteness
diving right into work and organizing of this
wondrous and complex movement
transforming like fall leaves
we must be like the wind to keep up
and i ask, as Black mixed-race Caribbean migrant queer woman,
how can we rise as a people (people of color, united in our shared
oppression yet
we differences thick and bubbling to the surface every time we
meet)
long experienced in lack
marginalization, disenfranchisement, police/state brutality, criminalization,
deportation, displacement, dehumanization, economic and social
injustice,
the lingering effects of slavery and colonialism,
globalization and immigration policies,
interlocking systems of oppression,
we have long been occupied.
(Communities of color, the poor and working class, immigrant
communities,
formerly & currently incarcerated, trans people, undocumented
workers,
and others who are marginalized have long known
what so many people are waking up to now,
yeah, we know this shit ain't right.)
the revolution is
here
the revolution is
now
it is more
than possible
movements spreading
like wildfires of defiant
love
all over the
world
rising rising rising
out of the lies and false promises of capitalism
out of so-called free trade and free markets
out of corporate wutlessness and greed
out of corporate controlled, puppet-like governments
out of the privatization of natural resources
out of environmental crisis and degradation
out of unemployment and debt
out of poverty
out of state violence
out of the prison industrial complex
out of gender-based and trans violence
out of class exploitation
out of immigrant struggles
out of despair
out of hope
for something better
out of belief in each other
out of belief in community
our world torn and divided by too much
yet the complex unity of this 99%
experiencing myriad levels of inequity and injustice
lack of opportunities, seeing the hierarchies that bind us
raising our fists, hearts, and minds
together in a revolution hard to name
but one that was/is inevitable
talkin' bout a revolution
sounds like a
whisper...
don't you know...
one day we gonna rise up
and take what's ours!
this is our time
this is our world
this is the most important thing
rising up in solidarity
to take back what’s ours
to re-make our world
to re-create in our own image, thought, word
to re-invent, to re-start, to stay woke
people of color, let us occupy this dissent
let us dissent within/through/after this occupation
long after this whisper ends
let us / stay woke #together
all I want is my body
Angelique V. Nixon
I carved in
my body
memories of
rape and coercion
control and
no-other-choice sexual relations
spirits of
Black women, Brown women, Yellow women,
women of
color, sing in unison of blood and torn tissue, and
split
psyches, remember, what I had to do, was
made to do
breeding (of
slaves), denial (of rape), benefits (of war)
unfree
living capital control, painted as non/being, in lustful hate
crossing borders
woven inside my body, slashed and divided
I carved on
my skin
sacred
symbols of present and past, scars of rhythm and vibration,
haunted,
fibrous sketches of time, spread across earthmemory
Enslavement,
Indentureship, Reservations, and Occupations
far from
over, we are still at war, being female and locked under phallic guns
UrbanGhettoPoorYouthWomenColoredBlackLatinaWelfareTrappedRacialSteroes
playing us
over and over again, centuries of the same resonate, recent decades spill with
perverse comfort—Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, Guatemala, Ciudad Juarez, Zimbabwe, Congo,
Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan—colonial weapons, neocolonial silences, utensils of
war/empire
I see women
of color, praying and organizing
I see women
raising fists, voices, and pens against patriarchy, power, and state
I see women
loving women, as radical, against these silences
(taking back
our bodies)
 |
| Cover Design by Julia P. Ames features the painting -- "The Butterfly Effect - The Countess" by Claudette Dean |
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