"Grace of Wonder"

Too much to catch up on ...  reporting back on the second part of summer travels in "Epic Journeys, part two" still in progress.  But in the meantime, I wanted to share a poem I wrote last Fall and finished this summer...  

I just got back from a really inspiring time at a conference on Black Sexual Economies: Transforming Black Sexualities Research. And so I decided it was time to share this poem because it feels/sounds like a perfect reflection of what it means for me to think about, represent, and take seriously our erotic and sexual lives as Black people, and Black women particularly.  Making ourselves subject...  being and becoming...  Carving spaces for ourselves to be...  

I saw Grace Jones in concert last October for the first time, and I was in awe and wonder of her being, and so I thought a lot about my mother and her being...  My mother's middle name is Grace and she was a performer too - she danced in a Cabaret show on Paradise Island in the Bahamas in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  But things didn't work out so well for my mother in those spaces and in her life for all kinds of reasons...  and so that's what came out in this poem - imagining what kind of inspiration Grace Jones might have been for my mother.  There were all these moments during the concert that made me think about this -  especially as Grace Jones' son was on the stage playing in her band, and I wondered what it must be like to be her kid...  this made me think of these relationships between sexy empowered mothers and their children even more - and their similarities as fierce and beautiful... misunderstood women... in the context of all the controls over Black women's bodies - also thinking about their differences - Grace Jones as a dark skinned Black women and my mother as a light skinned Black woman...  yet I see something similar in the performance and defiance of their bodies in a time/space we continue to grapple with in the context of our search for sexual freedom.

Grace of Wonder

Angelique V. Nixon

I see you Grace Jones

on this late October evening

blessing us at Roseland, New York City

for two loving hours, gripping us with magical

transformations, dazzling us in the light

bending to your will, smooth and rough,

like your powerful voice,

each hat, each accessory

defying gravity. 

I see her in you, you in her

my mother, Kim Grace Louise,

imagining that she was

or could have been

like you

if only, she had been able

to be

her full self

and thrive.

There is such danger in being a Black woman

in charge of her own self, in love with her own dynamic flesh,

(dangerous loving our black selves, especially in the dark, but we must love our flesh, we must love all our flesh and each others’ flesh in all hues, tones, spaces in between),

she so comfortable in her dark vibrant skin

she so confident in her sexy lifeforce

she so defiant in her raw sassy voice

rock star in freakdom performance,

genius and unafraid

creating rhythms out of chains

people attempt to place, name

and capture you, as you remix them

words sounds movement in brilliant ecstasy.

I see you playfully and subtly

yet forcefully using your voice

as weapon

as choice

as force to be

never contained

living wildly, breaking through, madness

carving space to be more than

exploding categories

the definition of fierce

you are hurricane force winds

escaping from restraints of mind body control

your images have haunted me

reminders ever so slightly of her.

I see you in her, her in you

I wonder if she found you as a teenager

as a dancer with starry dreams

as a young woman growing up as she raised me

looking up to you as a symbol

of freedom

a path to wholeness

amidst the haziness

of never being enough.

I imagine her looking up to you

seeing the grace in you through

her eyes, her voice, her body

I’m a hurricane

Here I come

Eye of the hurricane

The calm before the storm

she was always the storm

raging fyah nestled in love

and ever defiance

she was everything yet nothing like people said

she was outrageous, flamboyant, and (sometimes) free

in the ways she could be

she was graceful fyah

whipping her soul around spreading

herself to thing of desire, dancing

yet reeling herself tightly

into a ball twisting upon self protection

shell exterior tough

with all this Yemanja and Oya power
I see you both casting whips and spells.