Fall 2016 by The Ankh

WESLEYANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STUDENT OF COLOR PUBLICATION FALL 2016

ANKH

Volume xxiii Issue 1 Staff:

Taylor McClain Hailey Broughton-Jones Aleyda Robles Elijah Jimenez Kafilah Muhammad Catherine Wulff Kazumi Fish Jordan White Aili Francis Eloise Seda Lena Mitchell Campbell Silverstein Camilla Lopez

Contributors:

AJ Wilson Octavia Bürgel Jumoke McDuffie-Thurmond Katherine Puntiel King Ali Emeka Princeton Carter Kai Williams Kelly D’oleo Lola Makombo Mina Khan Ruby Fludzinski Shani Strand Xavier Cornejo Caroline Liu Jahmir Duran-Abreu Andrea Granera Jejomar Erln Ysit Kalib Varela Kiara Benn

The Ankh

What is the Ankh? The Ankh is Wesleyan’s student of color publication. We ask that all submissions fulfill the following criteria: that they be by and for people of color. What can you do? Read the Ankh, just like you are now, and contribute! Even if you aren’t on the staff, even if you aren’t confident about your writing skills, even if you’ve never done anything like this before, there are many ways you can contribute. You can submit any type of writing--fiction, non-fiction, expository essays, news articles, poetry. Any kind of visual art is welcome. Many of the pieces you will see in this issue were created at one of our open workshops, which we will continue to hold throughout the year. If you’ve created something and want to share it with others, do it here. The Ankh is your space.

Submit to the Ankh!

The Ankh is looking to expand our digital team! If you are interested in working on our website, managing social media, or expanding digital content, consider joining our staff!

Cover photo by Octavia Bürgel (Oberlin College) Back cover art by Aili Francis

This edition was sustainably printed with support from:

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When people ask me if I speak english Mina Khan

When people ask me if I speak English, I say I speak with the lash of the tongue, the weight of a fist I slur out syllables Fuming from decades of frustration. My skin folds into pages yellow from age My wrinkles weep of sex slavery arranged marriages child labor and immigration to a Land where the sun finally refracts onto my dull skin and I am greeted with this: “Ni hao, Kai-Lan. Do you like pad thai?” My mother woke as my grandmother did Wrapped in rag, tossed to the side assumed stillborn But still they Woke and Walked until the soles of their feet cracked with callouses. They traded education for winter coats, And fed their bones on starvation.

In the colonizer’s tongue, my throat creaks for generations of Asian women. My lips will open to spill and tint and yellow the atmosphere. So when someone asks me if I speak English, I think of furrowed brows and immigration papers Of green cards and the label “Alien.” Of those who told me to Go back to my Country My Homeland My Heritage where Grandmother sat on mountaintops and watched her skin bruise in the shape of her husband’s hand. But I am not my Grandmother. So when someone asks me if I speak English, I say “Yes. I do like pad thai, but also, Fuck you.”

I wake today in an extra long twin bed. My teeth ground flat from night terrors. Hands are stationary, damp like my mother’s eyes when I held my high school diploma. I carry her sweat and my privilege My privilege of being Angry and Asian And speaking as if I am Angry and Asian And being able to Climb onto street corner and Peel Lips over Canines and let words— Stale, translated — leak.

Jahmir Duran-Abreu

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Lola Makombo It begins like this, they teach you first that we were born here, and then they forget. It begins like this, they teach you we exist, after the crucifixion. There was desert, we saw spirits in land and all else that was living, we are storytellers and nomads, and women have been carrying water on their heads for centuries. They teach you about the cities, the ones that had what they took. They teach you about a language, masks as our only art, a kingdom, trade. Don’t they teach you trade? taken from our homes, men turned into bodies— but they don’t call it our history. And then they carved us and they teach you there was no resistance And then they carved us and you heard it was exploration And then they carved us and no one knows how many bodies they left. They teach you that we were weaker and were prizes to be enslaved, and then they called it exploration. They don’t teach you the wars or the independence because they lost. It begins like this, they don’t teach you what isn’t over not about the kids in uniform the brother of the adopted and the girl with the swollen chest, the brother of the learning to shoot, enlisted to rape. It begins like this, they teach you we are storytellers, history remembered through each other’s voices, but when have they ever listened, how do we know where we begin?

The Ankh

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Self-Care Shall Not Be Trivialized Kai Williams

Who is checking for my brown girls who love themselves? Who is checking for my brown girls who love themselves? Are you? Do you tell us, “go on sister.” Do you fix yourself to make a note to comment on the unleashed natural blessing of our hair, the celebrity of our conch bracelets and movement buttons that we pin above our breasts next time you catch us flexing? Do you accept our definition of love that we lifted from bell hooks, about how in order to love us you must extend your fingers to shelter us from the flood, to help us grow towards the sun and we can extend our fingers to create a roof with the fitted pieces of our held hands and any love where one party does not stretch for the other or reach out to smack— that is not providing. Will you step back with bowed head to God, if we explain that we can extract love from ourselves, live off our own blood, anoint ourselves with our own honey, spread it across our lips to balm them, promise to want that for us, to want us to be able to revitalize ourselves. we do not trust that anyone will be for us what we can be for us nor do we wish to a girl like me could fall for herself not for the nose in the mirror, for the soul cradled in the sternum take me or don’t but you don’t get to leave how could you? when you are planted firmly in my shadow?

Caroline Liu

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Kiara Benn

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Taylor McClain

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This altar was put together for Dia de Los Muertos by Fabiola Sandoval and Ivan Villanueva at Mercado la Paloma in Los Angeles in honor of Central American Refugees. May all the Central Americans that have died in the horrible trip between their respective countries and the U.S. Rest in Power. May all the Central Americans that have died due to the U.S. produced violence currently plaguing their countries Rest in Power. Pic shared on Facebook by Dichos de un bicho.

The Silencing of Salvadorian Refugees and the Lack of U.S. Accountability Aleyda Robles (she/her/hers)

Central Americans from the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) are one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the U.S., especially in Southern California. Salvadorians are predicted to become, if they arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t already, the 3rd largest Latinx group, following Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Considering the colonial implications of why Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are two of the largest groups in the U.S. might put the topic of this piece into context. As many people, I would hope, know by now, the Southwestern part of the U.S. was once Mexico. This land was taken from the Mexican people as a settlement after the Mexican-American war, or what I prefer to call it the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846-1848), through the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848. Puerto Rico to this day remains a colony of the U.S., while politicians may call it a territory it is, in fact, a colony. In no way do I intend to simplify the historic U.S exploitation of Puerto Rico & Mexico but rather my intent is demonstrate a connection. Both countries have been heavily impacted by U.S. colonialism, imperialism, racism, and misogyny and thus both countries are currently in a huge state of political, economic, and social instability. These conditions explain why Mexicans and Puerto Ricans make up a large part of the Latinx population in the U.S. But what about El Salvador? Why are Salvadorians becoming the fastest growing immigrant group in the U.S.? The brief answer: El Salvador has also been heavily impacted by U.S. colonialism, imperialism, racism and misogyny and thus it is currently in a huge state of political, economic and social instability.

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A detailed answer: The gang violence that currently plagues El Salvador has roots in the Salvadorian Civil War (1980-1992). The two sides that officially fought in this war were the Salvadorian military and a leftist guerilla organization called the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN). The FMLN was created in October 1980 to fight against the Salvadorian government for the rights of the indigenous and impoverished people of El Salvador. The third “unofficial” party fighting in the war was the U.S. government. Leading up to the Salvadorian civil war, the U.S. government began to take greater interest in Central America due to the resources and labor that could be extracted from the countries in the region. For the U.S. government, it was absolutely necessary that the 14 family oligarchy that controlled the Salvadorian government at the time stayed in power so that the U.S. could negotiate with them and profit from the region. Throughout the 12-year war, the U.S funneled over $5 billion worth of aid to assist the Salvadorian government in its fight against the insurgency and also provided the Salvadorian armed forces with military training. The U.S. military training and aid prolonged the war and provided the military and the right-winged death squads with the means to fight one of the most brutal and bloody wars against the Salvadorian people. While I think it is important for people to know the details of this war, I will not engage with them here for they are gory and emotionally draining to read about, let alone write about. Ask me about books that talk about the Salvadorian civil war, if you are interested in learning more. The U.S. produced violence led to a huge influx of Salvadorian migration to the U.S. in the 1980’s. Right around this time, la Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, which today are known as two of the most powerful gang in Los Angeles and El Salvador, originated in the streets of LA as a survival mechanism for young Salvadorians. In 1994, California passed the “3 strikes you’re out” law, in order to toughen up on “crime”. This law had a huge impact on the black community and also in the Latinx community, especially Salvadorians, because it facilitated the deportation of young Salvadorians by criminalizing and vilifying them in the media due to their “gang involvement”. Something as minimal as drug possession led to massive deportation initiatives. This is the moment when the U.S. delivered its final blow to El Salvador and created the transnationally powerful gang, La Mara Salvatrucha, that many know and fear today. Although La Mara operates in El Salvador, it originated in the U.S. Many Salvadorians were deported back to a country that they did not know, and did not identify with because they had been raised in the streets of Los Angeles. Alienated in this way, they went back to the only survival mechanism they knew, the gangs. The U.S. produced El Salvador’s biggest nightmare and now Salvadorians are being imprisoned in “detention centers” or are being deported back to their literal deaths. They are being denied refugee status, when they have every right to it in this country because the U.S. is to blame for El Salvador’s current gang crisis. The war ended in 1992. That was only about 25 years ago. There are people living in the U.S. who left their home country fleeing the war. There are people in El Salvador who stayed and survived. These are people that can recall the atrocities of the war and that continue to suffer today. Our history is a history of profound trauma and suffering that is hardly ever acknowledged. There is absolutely no accountability, or acknowledgement of the reparations that the U.S. owes to El Salvador and the people of the Salvadorian diaspora currently residing in the U.S. Instead my people are silenced, vilified, and criminalized. So do not dare talk about the refugee crisis in the U.S. and not talk about El Salvador. Do not dare criminalize my people but refuse to learn why the country is in this current state of chaos. Do not dare talk about the Salvadorian Civil War and not talk about U.S. accountability. Yes, my country is bleeding but these were not self-inflicted wounds, if you want someone to blame and criminalize blame the “land of the free and the home of the brave”.

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Dear Everyone

King Ali Emeka

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Kalib Varela

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Caribbean Niggers kelly d’oleo

Identity hollows out our bellies forming islands, we wear the world on our skin,

they don’t recognize we are Black too,

I don’t know if peeling it off will form continents but

I’ve only been to the island twice, but

half of my birthmarks look like Haiti, the other half DR.

I wear its history on my skin. my blood is not whole, it’s mixed.

I exist between the space of 3 borders, black, white, other. my mother and father don’t know that blood isn’t enough, that the blood doesn’t make you one. their coming together told the stories of racial erasure. my mother says We have some Haitian in us that’s why my nose looks like this. my father says DR and Haiti have an ugly past

Aili Francis

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Father of Color

Princeton Carter Foundation of a nation rooted in shackles,

or office I’m un-armed, please !!!!

Murders of black men pushed to the shadows,

I’m not sure how to tell’em the systematic truth,

As my son plays with his Buzz Lightyear rattle,

How I’m trying to protect him from those who are sup-

As my wife tired from work, continues to battle,

posed to protect you,

My sadness flows, tears unravel,

How am I supposed to tell him there’s mass genocide on

Knowing everyday he’ll have to fight like hell,

black youth,

To avoid his funeral or a jail cell,

The new gangs got badges and wear blue,

Systematic racism has a destined plan to snatch the life

Riot gear, tear gas, gas masks, and black shoes,

out of my lil man,

Racist system, he’s resistin’, shots fire, cleaning crew,

History repeated, a familiar fate, I hope he’s never out

Another black man down, real justice is past due,

too late,

We were under the ship never part of the crew,

Or with too many friends in one place where they can

Injustice in the system is like yesterday, nothing new,

become victims of anger and hate,

So don’t expect justice from a system that wasn’t meant

All because of his race,

for you!

When he gets old enough to understand we’ll have to talk man to man, Not the birds and the bees but the “Stop I can’t Breathe”

Naked Jumoke McDuffie-Thurmond

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Alternate Lives Mina Khan

There’s not much to do on a subway but think. This morning on the way to school, my mind wandered around the turns, the paths I could have taken--or rather, the ones that could have been taken for me. For reasons beyond my control, I could be on three stark paths: with my mother, with my father, or here. When my mother was eight months pregnant, she made the fourteen-hour journey from New York City to Seoul, Korea. Her arms clenched a passport, a bloated stomach, and a one-way ticket. But after her c-section, she changed her mind; she returned to America, her husband, and her two children. If she hadn’t, my life would be drastically different. I would have grown up in Korea. I have noticed that the Korean side of my family is more inclined towards those of their own ethnic background. I am half Korean, half Pakistani. Although this is invisible to the American eye, it’s blaring to those of the Koreans. There’s something different about me--perhaps I’m the victim of some botched plastic surgery. But when the truth is revealed, I am no longer a victim; I am no longer pure, not really Korean. I have not yet been fully accepted into Korean society. If I lived there, I would have to lie about my ethnicity to avoid judgment. I would feel shame for what is most important to me today: my diversity and individuality. My next timeline begins when I was seven, when my mother was diagnosed with hematoma. Blood clots littered her brain and spilled onto her spinal cord, washing over her nerve endings. It didn’t look like she was going to make it. Luckily, she’s a fighter. But arrangements were still made. I heard them--my father’s family--discuss it when my mother went to bed. His family is traditional. The girls are kept at home and are found suitable husbands as soon as they menstruate. Only my mother insisted on my education. If she had passed, I would be different. I would have been taken out of school in the third grade. My uncle, Abrar, would have found me a husband by thirteen. By now, at seventeen, I would be the reluctant mother of three. Family photos would feature young skin worn by suffering, tired hands clasped by my forty-some husband and three vibrant little boys. Although there might be perks to all of these timelines, I must say, I’m happy with mine. These timelines take from me my key identifiers: my ethnic background and my educational opportunities. My Korean timeline would have stripped me of the duality of my cultures and the racial identity that I’m now able to explore. Here, in America, I have been gifted an education; I am able to read for pleasure, whereas many of my Pakistani cousins remain illiterate. This very well could have been me, but my education has changed my trajectory. My circumstances have made me liberal, informed and outspoken. I am not afraid of confrontation; rather, I bask in it, as it leads to discussion. I have learned to confront, explore, and eventually take pride in every facet of myself. It’s absolutely bizarre to think that if things went differently, if my mother had not lived to leave my father at the specific time she did, I would not be the person I’ve become. While I was probably born with certain attributes, different attributes have been made stronger through my experiences. Pakistani Mina or Korean Mina, although the same person, would be almost unrecognizable to American Mina. Lives are a series of coincidences that compile into experiences and those experiences compile into people. I am made not only of my experiences, but of others’ too. I am made out of anonymous mistakes and successes that bounced off of one another and settled into one solid space: here.

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Andrea Granera New York University

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Katherine Puntiel

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Salt pt. i I keep dreaming about drowning. Did you know that black people are ten times more likely to drown in pools than white people? Good thing I only swim in the ocean. Do you know how many black people have drowned in the ocean? You blink so that your eyes are always coated in salt water. When you drown your eyes open in panic, unable to focus, open and unable to see. What would you need to see? It takes you longer to drown in salt water than fresh water, about four times longer. Maybe it recognizes you as itself. Maybe it takes longer to amalgamate than it does to separate. Maybe it is harder to talk to yourself than it is to talk to strangers -- it takes time. In salt water you drown in your own fluids. It is not a lack of oxygen but an excess of self. Your lungs fill with salt water and blood, when you drown, you drown in yourself. I dream more awake, eyes open and unused. My eyes are getting worse. Hopefully, when I am blind I will have learned how to trust what I see.

Salt pt. ii Your proximity to the lakes was comforting, even if they were only lakes, circumscribed and managed. I had never been this far from the ocean. My mother came to visit and as soon as she saw me she cried. The saltwater was too much. I had travelled over one thousand miles to leave it behind and she had now travelled over one thousand miles to bring it back to me. Salt pools in her eyes and my name on her lips, I smiled. My mother is from and of the ocean, born and raised on the coast of an island. She has never lived more than 10 miles away, Savanna-la-Mar, Montego Bay, Kingston, Seattle, New York City, New Jersey. Commitment. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what to do with her so we ate at a Cuban restaurant, in Minnesota. It was good-- it too, farther from where it should be. I had the desire to embed myself in its seats, already scratched and bathed in others names, memories, and attempts to relocate themselves in the grain. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really go anywhere, or see anything. We walked all the way to a museum and never went in. My mother really just wanted to walk. We mostly traced the lakes and their parameters. It is hard to be in spaces with another when they have already been mapped out and marked by just one of the two. In some sense it is easier in that there are trails left for you, trails you too can learn to love or fail to love. Failing to love them feels much easier than learning to love them -- it feels like default. Shani Strand (Oberlin College)

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SONG OF MY MOTHER Jumoke McDuffie-Thurmond

I dreamed about you last night. I heard your voice call out to me and almost...beckon me to follow, so I did. I followed the echo of your voice to a beach, but when I arrived you were not there. No one was there. The only thing in front of me was a vast ocean that seemed to stretch far beyond the strands of time. I stood there waiting as the waves crashed near my feet. I listened for your voice to guide me again but this time I heard nothing, so I began to walk to the water. I let it wash over my feet and stood there, ankle deep, looking out on the horizon. I had the urge to wade deeper in, but before I could act on it, I felt your hand grasp my shoulder. When I turned to face you, you looked me in my eyes for a moment before pointing to the shore and saying “Your work is there. This is the land of the dead.” And then I woke up. How do I begin to seek you? I can’t touch you. I can’t see you. But I can feel you. I feel you in every corner and crevice of this place, I feel you in myself. There’s no escaping it. I feel you. But I feel the weight too. Most days I feel like I’m drowning in it, The weight of this history The weight of this blood The weight of their sins. How can I move freely on this land? Breathe the air that they breathed? Sit where they sat? I am constantly walking beneath the glare of the legacy of your oppressors. Of my oppressors. I’m bombarded with the daily reminder of their shamelessness. Of what they did to you. You, Eliza, mother of Thomas, You, Mamie, mother of George, You, Iola May, mother of Catherine, You, Catherine mother of Marica, Marica, My mother. You are all my mother, Named and unnamed, Known and unknown, You are all my mother and when I walk through this land I carry both your blessing and your burden. I’m trying to tell your story, but the deeper I go the more I feel as if there’s a fog that’s been cast over my eyes. Show me how to seek you mother, Teach me how to see you, Mother, Where are you?

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Do you walk beside me, existing in this space between memory and dream? This space between seen and felt? Where are you? Are you in the grass? The leaves? The sunset? A breeze? Are you in these buildings? The pillars of their wealth? Does your back still break from its weight? Are you sleeping? Can your bones rest beneath this earth? Have you found peace? Are you at peace? Or do you linger in this land? Were they your tears that watered the roots of these trees? Is it your blood that soaks this land beneath my feet? Is it your voice that howls in the wind? It was your shoulders that bore the weight of their barbarity How do I forgive them for what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve done? How do I forgive them for what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve become, Mother they have forgotten you and built tributes to these devils, These men who raped and murdered And broke And broke And broke And broke But the soil has not forgotten. The earth has not forgotten. The trees have not forgotten the crimes committed against you. They remember. Their branches are eyes that extend beyond the years of my birth, Their longevity stands testament to the fact that you lived as a human being. They vibrate with your presence, I feel you in these trees. They sing your song. And so shall I. Mother, my voice shall be your voice, This tongue will speak your truth, And I will carry you as I walk through this land. Oh creator, Lift my spirit and give wings to my voice so that I may sing the song of my mother.

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September 23, Wesleyan University

July 8, Atlanta, GA

AJ Wilson

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submission! Lola Makombo

submission! only in this way will we enjoy freedom and isn’t this what God intended how this was bestowed upon us Mother is a Catholic she believes them— as if the men who whipped parted the sea I believe in God and this was out of my control but to believe is to be the thing like to be black is to be— to see prison and not the chains born at our feet Mother is a Catholic and with each gospel we forget our history

Jejomar Erln Ysit

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Dear Kathleen Ruby Fludzinski Dear Kathleen, Every time I read or watch your work, the desire to be cradled in your arms and hear your stories wells inside my chest and morphs into the black and white frame filled with a photo of you and our mothers from 1971. Your hair is big, my mother is a baby, and the three of you look like carbon copies of me. Do you know that chunk in your throat that climbs when you look at old family photos? I picture myself next to the three of you, just as strong and just as beautiful. I picture you sitting on a bed, your white silk nightgown wrapped around your skin and your fingers pinched on a cigarette. I think of birds flyin’ high, sun in the sky, breeze driftin’ on by, Nina Simone playing on a 1960’s cassette player–– clunky, so new (now we can play music through something smaller than a dime)–– lodged on the seats of a bus winding through the red clay roads of Alabama. I see film clippings sprawled on a tile floor with circular stains from the base of ten-dollar wine bottles. I see you sketching the daisies beside your suburban house of thrown chairs and betrayals. You sway with your children on either hand, to the acoustic guitar that rings through the flower garden of a Puerto-Rican neighborhood in Rockland County. You kneel on the tile floor, face devoid of all softness, yelling at the man who broke you again and again. I look exactly like you––you exactly like my mother and me exactly like her. I see you on that floor. I see my mother on her bathroom floor that one night when I was nine, contemplating all that she lived for. I see her upending a table towards my father on Christmas Eve, raging in the memories of you doing the same twenty years earlier. Generation after generation, in the same way the world has grown and shifted in many ways, the world has also remained exactly the same. I don’t know every embrace of your love story. I know you shattered so many times that eventually molding your pieces together became second nature. I know he would show up intermittently after your split when my mother was a toddler. I know she would dress up and wait on your creaky stoop for any of his broken-down convertibles to roll by. There is a lot of heartbreak in abandonment. I’m sorry to tell you that in many ways, my mother’s story is the same. Your daughter says that she married her father, that if she had to call someone fatherly, she would name my dad. He’s fifteen years older than her, you see, and although she was forced to depend on only herself after you died, she had not finished growing up. Four years later, she met Marek, a thirty-five year old man who sat in books of equations. A distant cold fish, as she would soon call him, who offered little comfort, but who had big hands like her father and who already had a child. And she fell in love. I’m eighteen, Grandma. (I have no idea what I should call you. My mother calls you mom, your sister calls you Kathy? I think of you as Kathy.) I’m eighteen, Kathy. I’ve never been trapped in a love story that’s squeezed tight with scars. I’ve only seen my mother break again and again by her lack of a father, by your death, and at the hands of my dad. All her strength comes from you. All her perseverance and wisdom comes from you. She is so brave. She is so brave because you were so brave. You were born in a black body in 1942. You were young and black in 1960s America, you spent your time out of the classroom getting your jaw dislocated in a Mississippi jail, riding on the expectation of freedom, armed with nothing but your declared control of your body, begging others to join you on your idealistic bandwagon of interraciality. You sprawled your brown body across the dusty underbelly of America, needing to own your body, demanding to live free. In all of the ways the world has remained the same––the same pain that pierced you, piercing my mother, most likely going to sting me––the world has grown in so many ways. The film and TV world, YOUR world, has multiplied in ways you dreamed of. There is a black presence in the industry, black films, black TV shows, black characters that defy the hyper sexualized stereotypes from the Blaxploitation era. Kathy, I’m going to make movies some day. And I’m going to make movies that tell stories that are neglected. I’m going to make you so proud. The leader of the free world is black. His name is Barack Obama and you would adore him. An ignorant mistake people often make, however, is using that fact as indisputable evidence that there is no more racism in America. Racism

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can, to many, only arise in the monsters of the past, the big name slave owners or segregationists or behind the white masks of the Klu Klux Klan. Racism, to them, is simply a foreign monster that was magically eradicated after your work. People don’t understand how racism lives in our modern world, stitching up our red and white stripes, forming our blue stars and plowing the road to suburbia. What I see from your work, and the fact that you are one of three scholars credited for writing MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech, I see someone who trusts nonviolence, trusts humanity in ways I don’t think many people do anymore. But I could be wrong. You could have been just as realistic about the state of our bodies. Every piece of your writing, even every sentence in your letters to my mother is brought to life with philosophy and wisdom unlike any I’ve ever read–– not because I’ve never understood your genius, but because I understand that somewhere in me, is you, and somewhere in that chunk of you, is this beauty. The aching desire wells inside my chest and morphs into everything I hope to someday create. I want to become a lawyer and write legislation. I want to direct movies. I want to do a lot. And that is all because of you. If I met you, we would dance together. My mother would be whole again. She would be able to breathe on her own, without the years of breaking and rebuilding, breaking and rebuilding propping her up. So much would be different. But I have to settle for my never-ending investigation of you. I read your letters, I write about you, I paint you, I watch your films, I spread you. On my mother’s eighteenth birthday, just a year before you died, you wrote her a card: “Two sounds dominate my life in this room: birds and the whirr of the typewriter. Both hum a new song every day for me. The balance between them is the true balance between nature and art. Art tries to make music (written, visual, tonal... it is all the same) out of what it remembers. Nature is immediate unconditional responsiveness. Both exist in the human consciousness natu rally, to live at pace between what is and what one remembers is to live openly. Love, Mom.” I take this thought with me everywhere I go. With all the love I can give, Ruby

Mother

Kazumi Fish

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1984

Xavier Cornejo Back to the future because it’s 1984 Criminality is a thriving business more local than corner stores Police reports are like purchase receipts on bodies So cops run more numbers to strike the lotto More cuetes and more tear gas in bottles More riot gear and more tanks More squad cars and more foot soldiers for their ranks Waiting patiently to make you an item on their list Watching you outside your door Listening in to calls on your phone Speaking to you from flashing screens in your home But now isn’t the time to be scared They’ve been had you in those crosshairs Bullseyes on our backs because we’re the target audience Sling that crack rock and the amerikkkan (pipe) dream Sell you dope and sell you hope Whip it with a gavel in a Pyrex pot And now you have a recipe for genocide Reading step by step like the offer you can’t refuse Plea deals are like discounts on a lifetime Comin’ with special giveaways of bruises and contusions for five easy payments Of free 99 Stripped away from all that you love To exploit you for all they think you’re worth So hold on to that mirth, young boy And they just might make a profit out of you Or maybe a martyr Push those R.I.P. shirts or “free them” Facebook posts Because that’s the only way you survive

X.A.C.

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Kafilah Muhammad

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The Ankh

Untitled

Hailey Broughton-Jones ’18 Nana asked me if I've ever seen black water I said no Knowing that the clear water labeled white tasted metallic, like the black and brown blood spilled for the pillars of white excellence Nana said she learned to crochet when she was a teenager learned with strings of cotton and then upgraded to yarn when she started making Afghans for the northern winters Mama, up here it's the white liberals dressed in blue taking selfies with Hillary Clinton that are killing me, I say to my ma – a white liberal, currently not dressed in blue And she gets it She gets it But she doesn't get it And I think that's why my babies will have brown skin with kinky hair and black eyes cuz I don't have time to flip through the undercover Justin Timberlakes, trumps, blue lives, and all lives matters of this world Justin don't you go "oh you sweet poor soul”-ing me With your, let’s just have a dialogue From your planet of divine white savior complex where we are all one, fucking butterflies and sunflowers disguised as white camellia My grapevines tell me something differently They tell me how y'all want to see how people got down during White House Birthday Bash Cuz everyone wants to see the negro do the jigaboo And we dance But not for you And we dance But not for you And we dance till we sweat, Offering reprieve From the bites that decorate our body I don't have time to flip through the Justin Timberlakes, diversity university, trumps blue lives and all lives matters of this world Or the thanksgiving dinners praising Bill Cosby's reprimand of the black community talking about who can't pull up their pants

Volume xxiii Issue 1

The Ankh

Or tame their nappy hair Who aren't born pre-package acceptable Obama-certified black Get your ducks in a row, Fix that kinky kitchen, Oil that dark skin, Smile, smile, smile But not too much Wouldn't want them to know that watermelon seeds can slip through the gaps of your teeth and sew sam boes right onto the white house’s green lawn Get your people in line And then you can ask for your rights as long as you aren't so god damn black and loud about it Even better, have a high yellow ask for them with that good hair but shhhhhh God dammit not too Loud –you'll make people uncomfortable Did you hear that?! Did you hear that?! She just said black and slaves at the DNC She said my black girls Did you hear it over the white girl fight song? She said black girls on that stage And the mothers of the movement stood up on that stage before Bill Clinton took his place And talked about yearning to touch Hillary Clinton’s back And asking her to marry him not once but three times After purchasing her consent with a house You know patriarchy never seems to go out of style And Bill you wear it so well Mama up here it's the white liberals dressed in blue taking selfies with Hillary Clinton that are killing me because they cannot see that we dance and dance and dance, but not for them

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