THE SOUTH IS CALLING ME HOME AND I AM CALLING HER TIRED BY:MOTHER TOUNGE TECHNIQUES
INDEX HOME: 4. Connect These Dots ~ May 10, 2015 ~ March 7, 2015 10. This Is Home 12. The South Is Calling Me Home ~ Sensing Home
DISPLACEMENT: 15. But Where Is Home? 20. iAM A Child Of The Sun 22. The South Is Calling Me Home 24. Strange Fruit
CONNECTION: 26. You Are (everything) 28. When You Dont Know The Definition Of Home 31. iAM Visiable 32. Memories 34. Southern Sounding 36. Sensory Scientist 38. The South Is Calling Me Home
INTRO This creative process has forced me to unveil pieces of me. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to go on this journey with two individuals who encourage me to achieve new levels of vulnerability. I have never had the courage to allow others to read my poetry until now. ~Amber I am constantly in a process of re-birthing. I will never forget a very intense dream I had back in September 2013 where I looked in the mirror at myself, then to my right I see myself again, covered in blood, hands outstretched. This creative process has allowed me to connect with those bloody, outstretched hands. I feel that I am always processing, thinking, and archiving my feelings. This process has allowed me to get to know myself and be shameless in doing so. I have become intentional with myself and with the loves in my life. It has been terrifying and lovely at the same time. I am so blessed to have two beautiful beings beside me through this who have my back and love all of me. I am able to be my full self and proud. ~Rah Sometimes words are less than, not enuf to communicate the connections that hold us down, keep us sane, soothe our bruises and lift us up. when words fail us, how do we speak? we (trans)gress the permissible through our decolonial laughter, mocking the wackness of everything that rejects our beauty. in our crew, mother tongue techniques, i find the sacred resonance of souls that see the multiplicities of who we be. our acts of (trans)creation have developed over the sharing of meals, all the herbal teas, dancing and the sharing of memories. Amber, Rahel....i love you. ~SCZ
HOME CONNECT THESE DOTS ~Rahel In this black skin home can mean anything be anywhere there are times that i feel complete-ly lost. Surrounded by clouds full of grey smoke. Floating in the haze walking not knowing the directions. At times walking in terror. Sometimes, hand in hand with the humidity in the haze. Marks of powdery smoke left on me once I find a clearing. Marks of where I go on these blind travels. Then, there are times home comes to me in dreams. [4]
In an empty deserted space bathing in the same old water for the 20-some years i have been alive and known what dreams are. The same water that was there for me when i walked into the room at five years old. A mirror watching me. I walk out of the dusty room into a space filled with falling fire. Maybe they are stars? They disappear along spots on my body. It reminds me of the powdery smoke marks of my blind travels. Home is fire. I jump in. Sometimes I can find home in unfamiliar yet familiar places. Driving along the streets of Atlanta finding a spot that reminds me of the corner of 18th and Oak in Louisville. South meets south and I feel warm. Sometimes I find home asking the black woman at the subway station “Which way leads to JFK airport? I’m late for my flight home.” She tells me and wishes me safe travels. And says next time not to be so late. I feel her love. I feel at home. North meets south. I am free. Sometimes I find it striding down Laffayette Ave. In Brooklyn [5]
yelling about happy things with my love who now lives across waters. The smiles and validating laughter of passer’s by as we share our love loudly. South meets south meets north meets abroad. I feel connected. Sometimes I find it meeting an almost stranger At the MegaBus station in Chicago, spending the weekend discussing childhood, food, and music. Making new connections at that amazing black owned art collective with the juice bar in the back that you can’t seem to remember the name of. South meets-crosses borderlines, meets northwest, meets mid-west. I feel familial. I know some say that home can’t be in another, but What about the home that makes up us Black and Brown queers? Isolated from our communities. Communities that should back us. Communities that drain us of our creative and ultra-terrestrial energies. They take. We are like a drug that is wanted but not loved. We are not seen, but we are viewed. What about us? We create home. We re-think and re-name what home is. Sometimes it is inside the heart of that love that is so strong. Sometimes it’s in the smell of coconut oil in the hair of the person we feel so much for. Sometimes it is found when you finally meet your twin-love. Sometimes it’s when you finally feel what being called out [6]
in love really is. Home is when a person sees you and let’s you know What it is they see. Home reflects back. Home reflects forth. Home is fearless. Home is real. Home tells no lies. Home is fluid. It can change. It permeates through us. It nourishes the earth. Sows seeds of life laughter rain. Change is home. Loving is home. Feelings of anger and rage are home. Emptiness is home. Failure is home. We find home in knowing. We grow from the adventures of finding home in not knowing. In being lost. We embody home. Home isn’t just a physical structure. It definitely isn’t nuclear. Nature survives through the colonial terror. The nuclear war between white undead empty vessels tearing away at diasporic beings. Nature survives. It wraps in and around and breaks through. We are nature. Nature is home. We are. [7]
May 10, 2015 I connect the dots to home in peoples hearts. I don’t know where the lines start or end. I’ve never been good at reading maps and don’t care to. I find my way by observing old memories. Maps scare me. They remind me of white people staking claim and ‘discovering’ lands. They created the borders that separate us. Maybe this is why I can’t figure out how to navigate the lines in between the dots of my loves’ hearts. March 7, 2015 Looking back on my time in ATL I am thankful for litter reminders… Note to self--home is never far away. I am reminded that isolation happens everywhere and that you can set up camp all over and still feel far away. I’ve learned to create my home. Learned to love myself without need of comparison. I have learned to be thankful for the connections I make and to love my cracked and awkward voice and the slow explanations that come from scattered thoughts and desire to be seen heard understood. I have learned that travels in the south can create a closeness that feels sticky like summer humidity in NOLA after the rain. I have remembered what the smell of each coming season reminds me of: Front porch sitting convos with my Granny giving me a lesson on whiteness that I didn’t grow to understand until the past decade: You can never trust a white person. Your trust for a white person should never grow past how far you can throw a ball. I learned that the way I love follows me place to place because my love has my back even when I don’t. I am constantly reminded that I am [8]
allowed to love how I do. I have learned to trust spontaneity. Talking to strangers is a most spiritual experience. They have the best wisdom. They carry truths with them that someone close can never have.
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THIS IS HOME ~Amber “iAM” Nicole This is Home… where summer mornings are spent sharing coffee with my mother and Aunties on my Grandmother’s back porch, Laughing, gossiping, playing the dozens, then pausing to listen to the birds, the whisper of the wind and the quiet of the trees, the scent of freshly mowed grass lingers in the air, the humidity makes us treasure every breath, This is Home… where the fish is fried, and grits come with cheese, and biscuits are served with gravy, and family joins hands in prayer before breaking bread, This is Home… where the village raises every child, and “yes ma’ams” and “no sirs” [ 10 ]
become permanent fixtures in vocabulary, Where Queer partners are referred to as “friends,” and boys are punched by uncles so they don’t grow up “soft,” This is Home… where people are chain smokers, and there’s a church on every corner, and you constantly look over your shoulder because ya mama’s cousin’s best friend’s boyfriend might run back tell where you really were last night, a city of interconnectedness This is Home...
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THE SOUTH IS CALLING ME HOME ~SCZ The south is calling me home….and i am calling her tired. she is the routine exhaustion that we shake off with the mantra of keep it moving. she’s always hustlin’, hustlin’ for a dollar...nah, hustlin’ for some dignity, and she is tired of dealing with your shit. she has long carried the violence of whiteness in her flesh, desecrating her rich earth leaving her veins open. you plant trees that bear strange fruit in her soil, then force her to carry the harvest. home is a complicated narrative, it is the tension between (dis)placement and connections. it never feels like a place, i don’t dwell in human beings. home is grief. its the longing for a place that i cannot run to. no amount of travel will take me there. it is a place that exists only in the imaginary, like observing the [ 12 ]
cosmos through a telescope, it is a distant view. as a diasporic body i am always out of place. my body becomes place.
Sensing Home The south will always feel like home, like August sun on brown skin, humidity making a fan and a glass of ice tea the accessory to every outfit. home looks like the variance of shades and hues, the expression of our souls givin’ birth to the blues. we mix mediums and metaphors, finding exilic spaces on dancefloors. it is the rhythm of life, tastin’ sweet like honey, offering sticky sustenance feeding our souls and sharin’ our spirit a subtle introduction, a dialogue, a dance. where we communicate our myths, our stories, our narratives. our cadence creating connections, words that stitch us together, words like haaay and y’all. i have a tragic nostalgia for home. i have a longing for it. i love to see tobacco leaves curing on farmland. farmland curing, mountains and rivers, for being barefoot in bluegrass and playing soccer with the homies. i crave thorn scratched backs of hands as we pick wild blackberries. each cut creating remembrance. our mother gives and we are wild. i yearn for my grandfather’s greenhouse, and the magick of growing life. i long to be wrapped up in my mama’s arms. home can feel like Oujda streets, standing at the mediterranean, like taxi drivers with their beautiful country teeth, tracing the veins [ 13 ]
on the top of my hand, tell me that we have a history of the same blood, so we are family…..distant cousins…..darija spoken slow and sweet, it feels like poppin’ squats on medina streets drinking fresh squeezed orange juice….zuma de naranja…. the colloquial tongue speaks spanish...with each glass the complexity of the colonial condition becomes clear. the language du jour….a mezcla of spanish, french….arabic ...and berber….when you form words in your mind, they feel more like home, te quiero…….lo siento…..laa.....laa....laa at-tadhakar...at night you close your eyes hoping for a language to dream in. home can be found in the moments spent skyping with bredrin half a world away. black and brown love on street corners. the hospitality of sharin’ in our mama’s recipes. in the droppin’ of front porch wisdom. in our laughter and the loving of people we haven’t met yet.
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DISPLACEMENT BUT WHERE IS HOME? ~SCZ I want to go home. i think aloud. reality (dis)orients me... the absurdity of their spectacle disgusts me. i am vomiting on a floor in london you came into the heart of empire to study (dis)placement and forced migration what did you expect? you make friends with adi, you have nothing in common except she sees the absurd. another diasporic body out of place.
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in london you imagine that kentucky is home.... you disassociate from bodily pain, and imagine that home feels like family dinner.... Sundays spent in carrom games, back when you covered your face…and could barely make eye contact with the world, these people saw you. i want to go home. i think aloud i wander Louisville streets because they make more sense than where i rest my head. sometimes my imaginary bleeds into real life; when mobbin’ on couches and skype session are viewed as acts of terrorism, that disrupt the status quo do you believe our foundation is that fragile? when my being causes harm, and our forms of life are battling. we dissolve into civil war. my love is a kind of transgression. in louisville….you imagine that morocco is home you disassociate from the trauma of just tryin to live. you retreat into memory...or make believe, some days its hard to tell the difference. home feels like the warmth of sun on your face. fresh figs and dates eaten by the kilo…. the medina, your moroccan colleagues teasing you for your [ 16 ]
love of bissara...and then y’all eating it for lunch, because comfort food, soul food and street food are best served as soup with lots of olive oil and cumin. i want to go home. i think aloud if place can feel like home, although you’re not sure it can. then maybe home is the streets of Meknes, the impromptu soccer games and oud concerts happening just around corners, someone brings out some atei benna’na’ and m’smen. space is transformed into celebration. Oujda and Mediterranean breezes almost, have that feeling. they are familiar...familial even, but not home. A family offered to give you home, you would make a great wife.... your father died while you are in morocco. you traced your grief through a starlit, van ride from meknes to Casa. constellation become markers, indicators that passed the time. a 10 hour bus ride...subtle points where you unpack the chaos that was you father.... my presence was too much for him, i reminded him of her. she was dead, and i was a mirror that reflected her image onto his grief. he was hateful, and hurtful. he tried to make me hate my brownness.
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the van pulls into the Casa airport, you get out. you feel disconnected from the tense vibrations of the airport. you are mentally preparing a checklist, things that must be taken care of, phone calls to be made. arrangements about funerals. you think of your small sister, she is all you can think of. i want to go home. i think aloud you were born in the foothills of the Appalachians. you were born to a fierce femme. you love the forest, the creeks and streams, caves. you have always brought more of the outside in, you love wild things. you were too brown for this place to love you back. too alien for their spaces. your mama raised you to be better than the lightweight revolutionary you feel like on good days. you worry she would be disappointed in you, as you trace country roads on a four hour journey to bury your father. this place is filled with ghosts. memories, that linger and filter like light descending from the canopy. you walk the land, always. looking for your grandfather’s ghost‌.its funny, its not until your adult like that you realize all his names for you, were him calling you yellow. [ 18 ]
daffodil. dandelion. butterscotch. his black-eyed susan. his sunbeam. it took him a long time to love your mother…. you are at your father’s funeral. holding your sister, she’s thirteen and devastated. you smile and kindly thank people for paying their respects. your southerness, your manners, your politeness are in full effect. your rapist is there, he puts his arm around you. your head spins, the scent of his cologne always makes you sick. when you catch a drift of it somewhere else, it takes you back to the hell that was your life. glocks pointed at your temple, or at other parts of you...for years…..but here he is, you don’t say a word, because we never say a word. familial secrets, that everyone knows but doesn’t speak. i am exhausted. people start drinking bourbon. honoring the memory of an alcoholic with shots, i can’t deal. i want to run….…i want to go home…. run away from here…….run to home…. but where is home?
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iAM A CHILD OF THE SUN ~Amber “iAM” Nicole I wanted to dance in the Sun, play tag with its rays, dodge every beam while praying that its ultra violet arms would find me and the game would begin again, I wanted to soak the sun in let its warmth penetrate my skin, burn so deep that my spirit would connect to all living things... connection… I didn’t dance in the Sun that day, I didn’t have the chance to play; waiting to be captured by my own need to be desired by something so far, so free, something so generous, Instead, I sat on the sidelines, hidden in man-made shade, sheltered from what should have been my natural place, [ 20 ]
denied the gift that was promised after our time spent ----sunkissed skin, glamouring with sweat, granted temporary evidence of being in the Sun’s favor No...I was stranded, chained by the heavy gaze of experienced eyes that had seen too much, poisoned by violent imagery, branded across their memory, trauma that now stopped me from basking in the light, and branded with the darkening of my skin… my skin… MY SKIN… MINE… still, you wished it were yours
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THE SOUTH IS CALLING ME HOME ~SCZ (dis)placement resonates through the question “what are you?” my body becomes a site for inquiry.
i am the birthing of brownness, seed of colonial encounters. i am the sound of words failing, of broken languages... twisted tongues fragments left in the places we forgot to remember. i am the product of a white daddy and a brown mama and i exist somewhere between…. i am a border being, a peripheral body… my narrative is unseen. my story never unfolds correctly, linear progressions are factual fallacies as pieces of me are pieces of tapestry, thread bare and patchy, reminding you of quilts from your grandmama’s cedar chest, each texture, every scrape telling tales, [ 22 ]
whispers of history…..this….this was your mama’s apron, that…..that was your great great grandmama’s weddin dress… this red right here….well this is its third incarnation, it went from being sundress, to your mama’s favorite purse to this tiny square….now imaging that…in reverse…. seams being ripped, and squares becoming scraps, getting scattered…..the trauma of being disconnected…. untethered from what holds you down…..trauma of being disconnected. like trying to make sense of the scraps, my story never unfolds correctly there are convergences….points where trauma explodes and fabric is frayed… I recently found these pieces in a box….i’ve been trying to put them together….
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STRANGE FRUIT ~Amber “iAM� Nicole Southern Trees, bear strange fruit, blood on the leaves and on the root, black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees I am the seed of trees that bear strange fruit, I am the seed of trees that bear strange fruit, ..hanging from the poplar trees, the knot tied by police secured by a system of laws that weave lies into a loop, that resembles a noose, made to fit our children when they enter the school system, teacher writes the notes and politicians give the go another black baby exterminated before reaching full potential a plant never able to blossom before being devoured by [ 24 ]
predators, such a strange fruit If i could plant a million trees would they grow or would they bleed cry the tears of fallen leaves crushed by the weight of privileged feet, crushed by the weight of privileged feet, crushed by the weight of privileged feet
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CONNECTION YOU ARE (everything) ~SCZ I want to build a life together, not like furniture in our nesting, my head resting where your head is resting, i got somebody for that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t i want to partner with you. i want to help you manifest realities, you remind me that we speak existence, i wanna live right around the corner so we can grow abundance like gardens and seeds. my itty-bitties and your itty-bitties will be fast friends, sharing mythologies of Oya and reclaiming sacred pasts, all while riding bikes between houses. i see futures clearly in front of me…. i see our future in the contours of your laugh, the wide toothed brilliance of your smile. it’s the expansive beauty of a mouth demanding more, its gaps leave room for histories unknown, clever spaces reminding us, we are more. more than someone else’s narrow history. your smile communicates secrets, [ 26 ]
the curve of your mouth makes me brave….. i am seduced by the sultriness of your voice. i want to learn its careful architecture. as syllables construct meaning, and words drip from you lips. it makes me thirsty. my ears getting drunk off the cadence of your words, your flow is like water. it becomes a river of healing that i want to bathe in. you make me feel elevated….lifted, like my worth is measured in more than subtle contours of my body. you let me capture moments, painting pictures with words….you say…..i seize you….because i see you…..i make salves to soothe your bruises….i want to delicately trace my hands across yours. i want to strengthen your support, add my weight to your foundation, for those days when the world tries to shake you down. i want your weight on my shoulders to carry you further than you could go on your own. teacher… student... creator…. giver....taker...you elevate people to their highest while creating the least harm…..you are a healer……. you are the deepest hue of blue trans(muted) into something new….you are ancient….you are the passing of time, and the realization of the divine. you make me recognize that we are gods…..that we are infinite and infinitesimal in the same exhale…...you are everything.
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WHEN YOU DONT KNOW THE DEFINITION OF HOME ~Rahel You can become a hoarder of connections. Stacking them up until there is no room to rest. Visitors walk all over them. I wonder how other people archive the connections they make? What do you do? Archive the remembered connections along your body left as Earth-marks of re-birth? Are they left in writings on your wall? Something to leave behind for newcomers to see and to and write over? What happens when your connections are written over? Are you forgotten?
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I wish I were more graceful with my connections. Instead I create a beautiful chaotic masterpiece. Marks of connections left behind In the mouths and on bodies of old lovers in corners of friend’s houses. It smells of sweet perfume, cornbread, red beans, collard greens, and morning dew earth. All my people free to be too loud too big too in love too smart too happy too much of ourselves. I see A space Where we create the music that guides our footsteps and no white man owns it I see a space where I am not told to silence my voice but a space where I am told to speak up [ 29 ]
I see a space where constant connections make isolation a thing of the past. I see a space of collective healing I see a space full of nature’s glow, my bare feet digging into the dirt and moss carrying vibrating messages of all the live things. I see a space that is slightly unfamiliar but somewhere I’ve been in my slumber travels. Because in sleep the spirit awakes and continues connecting. This is why I hoard connections. My spirit feeds off them. I thrive on this soul food. [ 30 ]
iAM VISIBLE ~Amber “iAM” Nicole I want to be in your space...but that requires the courage to be seen. You see me and that makes me uneasy. My many masks have served as layers of imaginary protection that melt away under your gaze. You see me. Every scar. Every blemish. You read my body language as if it is your favorite novel and you can’t wait to turn the page… When one is accustomed to being invisible, one becomes comfortable fading into the background, I back down from overt attention, I live my life as a single splash of color against black and white binaries, just subtle enough not to be noticed. Then you turn my way and I’m afraid. The freedom to be who I am is intimidating. you encourage the unveiling of every part me, the truths for which I was once ridiculed. my pride and confidence are black and blue, so you rub the bruises, inflict a twinge of pain to soothe the aches and eventually they fade… and before I can back away and surrender to my introvert nature, you seize me… I breathe….deeply….exhale….and embrace being visible… [ 31 ]
MEMORIES ~Rahel I will never forget the wide-eyed wonder that was my childhood self. How she brought you cold beers. Excited to feel the cold wetness on her vitamin D soaked hands. The smell of wheat traveling through her nose as She clicked open the can for you. Hearing the whoosh of the carbonated liquid knowing that I would be responsible for your thirst being quenched. Proud moments. Images of your smile and outstretched hand constantly come to mind When I think of those dark times where I was scared of myself [ 32 ]
and my mind. In my darkness you comforted me. I wish I could travel with you through lifetimes. I want to access that portal. Continuous recall. I feel your love though. Thank you for telling me I am ok.
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SOUTHERN SOUNDING ~SCZ We are southern sounding. the products of borders draw on flesh. where flesh makes us products. the confluence of bodies colliding in space. we are southern sounding. the birthing of brownness. the bruising of blackness. the blues of our people. souls that can’t help but sing. we are southern sounding. a multiplicity of meanings, the beauty of hues and variance the sound of laughter that’s a little too loud. we are southern sounding. from our transmigrant diasporic swag, [ 34 ]
to our y’alls. our tongues drip with crystals. we are southern sounding. skin the color of fine bourbon, guaranteed to intoxicate you. let’s get drunk off knowledge. we are southern sounding.
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SENSORY SCIENTISTS ~Rahel My people carry fire. Our feet brand the ground with dna markers. Ancestors can follow our path, carrying messages of future freedoms, re-imagined pasts. My people create clouds of smoke along the roads that never end‌. Stopping along the way to share smiles [ 36 ]
cornbread whiskey. The sun beaming recording the songs of the gardner’s long day in the backyard singing cotton picking spirituals, sowing seeds of more laughter, love, and tears. All to play back for the moon so that the smile will continue to rise in the mornins. My people are mystics from other lands We share collective pains collective courage healing each other from the pain of our father’s whip mama’s harsh truths, Uncle’s write off cousin’s misunderstandings and the deep green envy of the fam down the road. We heal. Even through all of the hurt that we inflict on each other and ourselves we heal. We come up from the deep red clay feet on rocks hand in hand. My people heal through the madness.
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THE SOUTH IS CALLING ME HOME ~SCZ Connections are the tendrils that keep me attached, fiberoptic fusions that dance along circuit boards. i find connection in code, the communication of meaning through the negotiation of words. numerical frequencies creating rhythm science sounds of sonic poetry, the trans(migration) of knowing and being across digital space…… fingertips (trans)cribing, (trans) communicating, (trans)gressing, (trans)locating without ever touching… connection is the bridge between worlds, it allow us to cross the rivers and canyons of displacement. swift moving currents that threaten to wipe us out, and deep recesses where histories are lost. [ 38 ]
my body becomes a bridge
in diasporas connections are healing, the mending of fissures and the soothing of souls. it is the warmth in a smile, the not of a head, the feeling of being seen, not just visible. it is in the hands of our lovers. the archiving of knowledge through touch. the decolonial wisdom we drink up on the bus. i long to be holding your hand on street corners where neither of us live, home is ephemeral, a fleeting feeling, like a child attempting to trap sunlight in their hands. connections are those sacred space where sunlight is trapped, where home is tasted in the meals we share. the love we have. home is a complicated narrative‌..home is‌‌..my body
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SCZ RAHEL AMBER iAM MOTHER TOUNGE TECHNIQUES