I asked for poems that were "impulsive, dangerous, fugitive, or otherwise subversive (in form, content, or style)" and poems "about pleasure or struggle, protest, and the future, or the (queer) self."
Happy Spring, beloved readers. I am holding you tenderly as the snow loosens its hold on the dirt, as the contemporary plants stretch their limbs toward the soil and the sun. The whole hemisphere takes account of its dying matter, and by this I mean we are counting the bodies of our loved ones and mourning those who didn't make it through winter with us.
In the belly of Empire, the names of those whose lives have been disappeared or interrupted by the State grow longer still as the seasons change. In Palestine, where we hoped the "ceasefire" indicated a time of renewal for the lives and livelihood of Gazan families, in lieu of April showers and spring flowers, Palestinians are actively being subjected to increased settler terror. The people of Sudan and the Congo continue to fight for themselves and the Global South. I imagine, amid the political volatility of it all, you're exhausted. Me too. I am reminded we remain fatigued by a world we were never meant to survive because we are indeed surviving it. I see you, enduring wage theft and war, genocide and gentrification, elections and the aftermath. I see you. There have been small delights, too, among the rubble of this young year. I hope you found yourself catching a moment to breathe surrounded by friends beneath a cool March breeze. I hope you've put your toes in the dirt. I hope you've made a poem of your body—masked at rooftop dance parties on the south side, at fundraisers or protests for Palestinian and Sudanese families, with lovers, at book clubs, in your kitchens. Smiling, despite.
When I conceptualized this Cumulative Realities folio last year, I admit I let my exhaustion lure me into a dangerous place for any radical. Overwhelmed by the state of our systems, I sought out your poems as respite, art made toothless by its pursuit of comfort. I found pretty language to cloak it in, but at my core, I wanted to get lost in the beauty of words. Literally, lost. I desired levity if I'm being honest. Something cute for us to carry from the streets into the nightclubs. I wanted a reprieve from the images of strewn bodies, the weight of survival, the burden and loneliness of political awareness. I wanted whatever human material that was left in me to have a moment of ease. A kind of brief escape. And I wanted your poems to help me do that. I'm owning it.
Our aliveness is not a gift or a privilege, but a responsibility.
It was SA Whitley's submission to the folio that invited me to critique my desires for something as static as "easiness" at this moment. In their poem Upon Learning That Papi Juice Joined The Palestine Academic & Cultural Boycott Of Israel, they write: "I know the pheromones/ of genocide live rent-free on the body even here—/ the strobe lights across the ceiling of the club/ open us back up/ to the missiles from moments ago." Damn. And in an instant, I was wrestled down by the rigor of "both/and" poetics, poems that carry many truths all on the same line. A necessity. I am grateful for language that surrenders me to such truth. Even in the middle of our grief, here in the belly of Empire, comfort always comes at a cost. Our aliveness is not a gift or a privilege, but a responsibility.
"Survival is a promise," wrote poet Audre Lorde. Yes, and what do we promise ourselves and one another? I asked for poems that were "impulsive, dangerous, fugitive, or otherwise subversive (in form, content, or style)" and poems "about pleasure or struggle, protest, and the future, or the (queer) self." As if pleasure and struggle do not exist in tandem within our bodies? As if the queer body must not always exist in the future we fabricate by way of performance? As I unlearn the State's enforcement of binaries and segregation, how fitting that I was humbled and checked by poets who offered work that confronts policing and gender subversion, at once. Poems about burial and the tender love of chosen family. Poems that shapeshift while mapping the stars. Poems that are at once on a dance floor in your city, and a protest in mine. Thank you for that defiance, poets. That reminder. That refusal.
And thank you, reader. For returning here with us, holding the art like a blade under your tongue in the middle of a Spring protest. For sharpening yourself like an oyster knife with poetics. For being soft and dangerous in such a way that helps build a cumulative world, a future world that becomes the sum of its beautiful queer possibilities. Queer like a freedom too strange to be conquered, as poet Brandon Wint once wrote. Queer like a new world, already here. Rest rigorously here, with poets b. ferguson, Brittany Rogers, SA Whitley, Kendra Allen, IS Jones, Yena Sharma Purmasir, MARS, desiree a. brown, jada renee allen, and Golden. Dance with them. Mourn with them. All the while, we build. Together.
With you,
Aurielle Marie