#afrolatina poet

[poetryfoundation-potd]

Belly, Buttocks, and Straight Spines

By Sonia Sanchez

For Sister Wangechi Mutu

1

you—enigmatic woman exploding

from clouds and intestines, riverbanks,

kneecaps, veins and horizons

tongues embroidered with eyelashes.

you burn in my throat

i walk your footsteps

singing.

you are here. you are there.

you will never go away.

you kiss your own breath

sleepwalk your eyes

stretch out with mouths

singing your legs.

2

i know you butterfly sweet

your lips taste of the sea

the years dusty with herstory

anticipate light.

your hands riot with pain

collapse in new prayer

touch this western stained

glass where ghosts commit

themselves to military blood.

the bleating hips

surrounding your teeth

wrapped in laughter

blood laughter

brittle noise

seaweed souls

whistling words

whose lil pumpkin are you?

who is your sister?

where is your mama?

our thumbs bleed ashes.

in this travel dust bowl.

3

this is a blues sermon

i think, hanging from

the sky

scratching at the night

where literary brains

demystify deaths,

seen from the angle

of your life,

you turn at the waist

in red and purple confetti

the day stitches up

your python mouth.

you stroll black

beyond the stars

star leaping blk/skinned

woman

seen from the angle

of the camera, you become

the mug shot

mugging a century of

incestuous nipples.

sound ... video ... smell ... 

riding death on

its lens

do not feed the animals

they will bite one day.

who speaks

who has spoken

this squat language

where are the vowels

and consonants and diphthongs?

do not feed the animals

they squat in herds

and will bite one day ... 

4

red orange breasts

leaking medical

hieroglyphics

bones for sale

immaculate bones for sale

stage right:

Ethiopian bodies

leaking into the ground

stage left:

old clothes unburied

children��s eyes undressed

men’s pants unzipped

women’s slips slipping

standing still backstage

awaiting modernity

master monsters with batons

conducting infernos

is God calling

your limbs to pray

to prey on

what’s in a name

a leg, a heart, a skull

an ancestral wind?

your intellect teases us

with zero tolerance for lies,

what’s in a kiss? a smell?

a black woman in white chalk?

a woman sleepwalking

on corners?

what is erotic about

a false step?

yo me espero, yo me espero

i wait for my coming, i wait for my coming.

now as your congregational

knees kneel

now that your birth laughs

a long pause

now that you sigh amid

the pale gaze of thirst,

is that God’s tongue

sliding down your throat?

5

yo sé, lo sé, yo sé

i know, i know it, i know

where is this brown skinned woman going

with her military hair

a bright hysterical flower

eating cake smiling cake

regurgitating cake

yo sé, lo sé, yo sé

i know, i know it, i know

smell the jelly roll woman

squatting in her skin

her bright face eating bluesorrow

smell the doctoral urgency

of her shudderings

female pain profiling

her hunger.

who scrubs the day white

while women fall down

with crucifixions?

can you hear

their birdspirits

strumming gravity?

can you hear

the saxophone

bloodletting the ghosts shout?

can you play this woman

with your fingers?

can you hear

her confetti feet

dancing undeposited rhythms?

now hear this. now hear this.

harpsichord teeth

mothbred smiles

put vaginas in a pill

box for awhile ... 

telegraphic buttocks

in bathroom stalls

you are tattooed on our eyes

against the tabloid walls...

mouths anointed with

peacock pricks hey, hey, hey

here i am, here i am

come along take your pick

hey hey hey hey hey hey

listen, listen, listen ... 

woman of eye socket-bone

love can wear you down

to a spinal eye-bone

love can make you drink

your own blood

lessen you got a catcher’s mitt

don’t go playing with love. love. blood.

6

silence, silence, ma chère

ca ya te. ca ya te. mi amor

no consecrated birthwaters ... today

no quicksilver blankets ... today

no surgical procedures ... today

just Bantu music with an asterisk beat ... today

just a night shudder under your arms ... today

just a pistol whipped skin ... today

just a lost pulse beat ... today

just a railroad train of butts ... today

just a machete beat against the sky ... today

just some cocked cocks standing at attention ... today

listen, listen, listen. Sister Wangechi

you hear me, don’t you?

and you hear, don’t you, how your

collages dance their armless delirium.

Sister Wangechi you hear me, don’t you

you hear the sacred music

eavesdropping these gallery walls

praising your beauty and bones

in this hallway of lost sermons,

you hear me don’t you

you hear the children running

a furious circle of legs

jumping adolescent rhymes

as they light up streets

with garbage bag balls as they

spill their magical spines

their genius, their surplus

knees on streets.

it is evening and we have

arrived in your arms of

lost seconds

you hear me don’t you

even as you navigate

this halo of ordained voyages

as you uncork the daylight

past these shadows

past our doors left open

and your gentle breath fills

the day with sweet eyelids

of silver

as you arrive at the arc of your name.

Sister Wangechi Mutu

you hear me, don’t you, and

i invoke your name, your

gallery of female matadors

as they come and dance in thunder...(click!)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159812/belly-buttocks-and-straight-spines

No Audio Included

[dresandro]

Thought of the Day:

“I look at myself and I see Beauty.”

17:17

[thebeside]

TheBeSide

“James Brown is you, James Brown is you out there. I didn’t make James Brown. Thank God he gave me the energy to carry out the roll. I was just playing my part for humanity-and I’m still playing my part for humanity. That’s my roll-and the roll has gotten me on the social thing because the social thing will remain the same until we change it individually you know what I mean? And we gotta change ourselves individually, you know. You can’t expect people to keep doing it for you...”

-James Brown, Backstage Interview 1983

“...As we have likely recognized by now, no two snowflakes, trees, or animals are alike. No two people are the same, either. Everything has its own Inner Nature. Unlike other forms of life, though, people are easily led away from whats right for them, because people have Brain, and Brain can be fooled. But many people do not look at it themselves very much. Having little understanding of themselves, they have little respect for themselves, and are therefore easily influenced by others. But rather than be carried along by circumstances and manipulated by those who can see the weakness and behavior tendencies that we ignore, we can work with our own characteristics and be in control of our own lives. The Way of Self-Reliance starts with recognizing who we are, what we’ve got to work with, and what works best for us.”

-Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh 

“Muchas de las letras salseras, quizás la mayoría, abordan tópicos referidos al amor, al gozo de la música y el baile, etc. Sin embargo, existen letras de contenido crítico sobre la sociedad, la política, etc. Es evidente que la mayoría de las canciones de un género popular como la Salsa no gozan de un rigor histórico en el nivel de lo que plasman sus letras. No obstante, resulta interesante la posibilidad de realizar una reconstrucción general del pasado del afrodescendiente a través de una historia, más que oral, de corte musical. En este sentido, la situación del afrodescendiente es rescatada.”

- Alejandro Álvarez Martínez, La Historia Afroamericana contada en las conciones de Salsa

“According to Aristotle, as well as Hegel or Marx, art,  in any of its modes, genres, or styles always constitutes a sensorial way of transmitting certain kinds of knowledge- subjective or objective, individual or social, particular or general, abstract or concrete, super- or infrastructural. That knowledge, adds Marx, is revealed according to the perspective of the artist or of the social sector in which he is rooted, or which sponsors them, pays them, or consumes their work- especially that sector of society which hold the economic power.”

-Augusto Boal, Theater of the Oppressed

“Once we have the knowledge of self as a people then we could be free and no devil could ever enter the boundaries I stand in the center around all these sounds I see Blessin' Allah that I found the key That's how we be We are by no means ashamed of our cultural background Not a tad bit 'fraid of change Look around, it's the same ol' same ol' thang..”

-Freestyle Fellowship, Inner City Boundaries

[diablaaahxo]

Come ask me some rando ish 🖤🤘🏾💯

[cehioprrst]

first post at 12:57am. this is gonna be a peaceful page hehehe

[brooklynmuseum]

Activist, choreographer, and composer Victoria Santa Cruz worked closely with her brother, Nicomedes Santa Cruz, to create spaces for black theater in Peru. Her poetry performance 'Me gritaron negra (They Shouted Black at Me)' follows her own childhood experiences of racism and her later embrace of her blackness as a source of pride. The performance addresses black experience in South America, which is often denied and devalued by dominant cultures and regimes, despite long histories of Afro-Latino traditions throughout the region. By forcefully uttering the words “¿Y qué?” (“So what?”) to the rhythm of clapping hands, which also sets her body in motion, Santa Cruz calls for self-empowerment and black pride. 

Don't miss Santa Cruz's work in Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 which opens April 13.

Posted by Allie Rickard Victoria Santa Cruz (Peru 1922–2014 Peru). Me gritaron negra (They shouted black at me), 1978. Documentation of performance, excerpted from the documentary Victoria—Black and Woman, 1978. Director: Torgeir Wethal; producer: Odin Teatret Film Video. Video, black and white, sound; 3:58 min. OTA-Odin Teatret Archives

[laotracaralatina-blog]

María Fernanda, Ecuador

One Amazing Poet

"I grew up in touch with my blackness and out of touch with my latinidad. I remember thinking I was not part of Latinx culture because of my skin."

I actually don’t know where I was born. I say Ecuador, but I’m not entirely sure. I was raised in D.C. and the orphanage I was at before is in Guayaquil. Even if I find out I wasn’t physically born in Guayaquil, there’s a part of me that will always pay homage. At three, I was adopted and I moved to D.C. There, my blackness could thrive early in my life, in Chocolate City—which is now more white chocolate, but that's another conversation; Nineties-D.C. was crucial for my growth as someone transnationally and transracially adopted.

I grew up in touch with my blackness and out of touch with my latinidad. I remember thinking I was not part of Latinx culture because of my skin. Throughout my adolescence, my peers and strangers would point to my skin and my figure and say this was why I was hard to identify as ‘latino.’  When I spoke Spanish, I still felt like a stranger. As a kid, I loved my skin from the jump and got frustrated when anyone tripped over it. Strangers asked, “What are you mixed with?” or asserted “You don’t look like any latinos I know." Not being Caribbean, African American, African, or BlackEuropean, I didn’t claim the word black until I lived in Buenos Aires.

From middle school and on, my peers told me my hair wasn’t kinky enough and my features looked ‘too latina’ to be black. I thought by claiming my blackness I would take up space that wasn’t for me. Visiting Ecuador and Panama, I started seeing people who looked like me and recognized that there were many blacknesses. In my six months in Buenos Aires, Dominicans who looked just like me called me negra and morena. It was so loving and almost revolutionary for them to liken me to their sisters and mothers and aunties and for all of us to be collectively afrodescendientes. We kept in touch and started gathering for holidays and cooking together; it was so beautiful for me.


I'm someone who takes up space. A lot of it. Before I could own that and call myself BlackEcuatoriana, I felt pressure of the Eurocentric idea of womanhood, that told me to be soft, to quiet, to shrink in the U.S. society. But ‘being small,’ wasn’t me. Nor was it supposed to be. Once I could identify the box whiteness had placed over my identities, I was able to expand in every direction. My blackness is inclusive of thick, indigenous hair. My latinidad is inclusive of darker skin. I am of these two attributes and so very much more. Colorism allows mainstream and social media to place lighter skin at the forefront of even AfroLatinx media. 


You know, I read and hear a lot of people cite Sofia Vergara when discussing Latinx in media and I don’t think we add that Sofia Vergara does not even look like Sofia Vergara. She is a natural blonde who spent much of her life walking around as a narrow figure wishing she was more curvaceous. I think what is more interesting about this conversation of mainstream media is that social media affords latinx people of all backgrounds a wider scope. I scroll and come across more black people across the diaspora and spanish speakers with my skin tone, often deeper, expressing themselves in all kinds of ways. And we all get to be in conversation with each other.

Of course, social media is, in part, about people creating mirrors in which to see themselves, which is valuable regardless if it is mainstream or not; it is real. Off the top of my head, I think writers like Es Mi Cultura newsletter curator Tamika Burgess, BuzzFeed producer Julissa Calderon (LaJulissa), Closure producer Angela Tucker, Well-Read Black Girl founder Glory Edim—I could go on!—are crafting physical and virtual spaces where the survival of everyday, prismatic lives of BlackLatinx people are prioritized and honored.


This is why my poetry and Candela are so important to me. I co-founded, with poet Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Candela Writers Workshop, a monthly writing workshop open to poets who self-identify as persons of African descent and/or as Black with a connection to Latin American and/or U.S. Latinx culture.  Candela for me is to garden a space where artists can create and see themselves look back, where curious, engaged, and self-determined writers of various communities can explore one's interest in poetry, find or exchange resources, and strengthen one's craft. In an interview, Lucille Clifton talks about how black people have windows while white people have mirrors. White people look into mirrors wherever they go, while black people look through windows into the homes and lives of whiteness. It was so essential for me as I grew up to hear someone like Celia Cruz—Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso—who was proud to be herself, to be Black, to be Cuban and who was displaced, but still holds her memory of home wherever she went. Celia, along with Whitney Houston, gave me permission to take up the space that I do. I would watch their early career performances or music videos on TV or online and turn to my white Cajun mom and say, "That's me!" I want everyone to feel that energy and release their uniqueness. I think that’s why I love producing as well. In my free time, I am getting the chance to collaborate, either artistically or as a producer, with native New Yorkers (beautifully coincidental) to create projects and support spaces where people are welcomed to fiercely express themselves and exist face-to-face.

[pisceswoman23-316]

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#wcw #nittyscottmc #ladiaspora #afrolatina She been doing her thing for a while. Love her. #hiphop #femcee #poet #talented #storyteller Regrann from @nittyscottmc - on my negritude for @billboard @billboardlatin 🎥

[rainbowroweller]

I thought I'd do an Elizabeth Acevedo appreciation post.

I've only read 2 of her books, but I love her work. Her novels have so many important messages in them:

Girls can do it. You can be Black and Latinx (don't pigeonhole people). You don't have to have it all figured out. You know what's right for you. And so many more!

I really love that her characters tend to have a particular skill that they grow and nurture (Slam Poetry for Xiomara, Cooking for Emoni, etc.).

My favourite thing is that, although I am not in the situations the characters are in, and I'm not from the places they're from, I can still see myself in them, and empathise with them.

Overall, Ms. Acevedo is a phenomenal writer, and I highly recommend all and any of her work! 🌟

[maetheforcemoveu]

- It is beauty and angst, the purest form of my identity. My family grew up on Alexander Street. East side of Akron. Asthma attacks. Hopscotch. Dog fights. Xbox (old Skool). Popsicles. Basketball. 1 on 1. Pink violence. Sunday morning Church. Fresh, quiet air. Tranquil blue skies. Luscious plants and weeds spiraling out of asphalt and concrete. Cigarette ashes. Hug juices. Twisted coils. Lightly brushed kinks and braided down-to-the-scalp curls. Pink canopies. Thunderstorms. Hair Bobbles: Pink and Blue. Breadsticks. Power Outages. My Environment. My Barrio. My hood was the primary source of nutrition for my identity. It was home sweet home. It was unsecure security. It was mine.

- Kwame’ Gomez

[thelonelyqueenofthenight]

I use to have a Barbie that looked a lot like @amaralanegraaln She’s so beautiful! I hope she gets everything that she’s dreaming of. ______________________________________________________________ #Tuesday #Moonlight #Hope #Mood #Heroine #AfroLatina #Barbie #Ambition #HipHop #BlackGirlMagic #BlackGirlsRock #BlackExcellence #TheSupreme #Singer #SingerSongwriter #Artist #Writer #Poet #PerformanceArt #FierceSociety (at Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan)

[deathstardream]

I’ve been waiting to get my hands on one of her books for soo long!! They are always sold out!! I still need to get the rest, but I just got this book and it only took me ten minutes to finish it. Now I want more!!

[lasantera]

  #6: Elizabeth Acevedo #AFROLATINASTOKNOW *** The next Afrolatina I am honoring is someone I had been hearing so much about over the years, yet never read her work. Then I googled her. And like any good online stalker I fell in love with her and her work. The first piece I ever heard by the extraordinary poet, Elizabeth Acevedo was her poem SPEAR!!! And then I heard her read, HAIR, and then AFROLATINA!!! Y bueno… that’s it. I was hooked.

Here is a small excerpt of Elizabeth’s poem HAIR:

“My mother tells me to fix my hair.

And by “fix,” she means straighten.

She means whiten.

But how do you fix this ship-wrecked history of hair?

The true meaning of stranded, when trusses held tight like African cousins in ship bellies, did they imagine that their great grand-children would look like us, and would hate them how we do?

Trying to find ways to erase them out of our skin, iron them out of our hair, this wild tangle of hair that strangles air.

You call them wild curls.

I call them breathing.

Ancestors spiraling.

Can’t you see them in this wet hair that waves like hello?

They say Dominicans can do the best hair. I mean they wash, set, flatten the spring in any loc – but what they mean is we’re the best at swallowing amnesia…”

~ by Elizabeth Acevedo, Poem title: Hair

This Afrodominican woman aside from being an inspiration has what we call the JOY! That’s one of the things I love about her. You can go to any image on her IG and feel the JOY and her spirit! Her new book “The Poet X” being published by Harper Collins can be preordered!!! Get yo copy.

*** #afrodominican #Dominicanrepublic #afrolatina #afrolatinx #poet #spokenword #latina #writer #idpad #ourstoriesmatter #unapologeticallyblack #africandiaspora #afrolatinos #lhm #latinoheritagemonth #afrolatinosfilm #caribbeanwomen #activist #afrolatinadiary #writersofinstagram #poetsofinstagram#elizabethacevedo #caribbeanwriters

#AFROLATINASTOKNOW ~ #6: Elizabeth Acevedo #6: Elizabeth Acevedo #AFROLATINASTOKNOW *** The next Afrolatina I am honoring is someone I had been hearing so much about over the years, yet never read her work.

[diablaaahxo]

Ain’t nothin better than being melanin born 🍫🖤❤️

[therapybeyondme]

"You said you hadn't seen me in a min. Well, here I go!" 😁😊jajaja 🏃 FollowUS 👉@BooKUsEntModels_Artist @CreoleB One Love oxox #EmpoweringWomen EMPOWERING 💓#Love 🌍 😍 Follow US @BookUsEntModels_Artist @CreoleB #Travel #Ambition #Melanin #AfroLatina #BlackEntrepreneur #Aligned #Soul #Sapio #Introverted yet Extroverted yup The #Ambivert #Writer #PublicRelations #Australia #FILM #sincity #lasvegas #writers #poets #Sapiophile IndustryEvents #IndependentArtist DJs #Musicians #Models #PromoModels #PromotionalModels #Visionary #Networking #Entrepreneurs #Wanderlust

[peropoetry]

this is my soap box.

Did you know that soap came from Africa?

Did you know that I came from Africa?

Not directly,

No.

I am the product of a remake of a remake,

of a remake of a duplicated, imitation,

of a colonized, gentrified, white washed…

I am black.

I do not call myself African American.

I do not deserve to call myself African,

I can tell you that an ancestor of mine

probably came from the coast.

But there is always the possibility

they were sold

from somewhere else as a prisoner of war,

but I honestly will never know.

I have not right to call myself American,

Any native blood in me is too diluted.

Buried with the rest of the family secrets.

I am black.

My father was geechee and creole.

His mother Dutch-German, his father French.

If you want we can go down to El Dorado, Arkansas

to Massey street.

I will show you where the plantation

once stood.

My fathers last name was Massey,

this is where he once stood.

My mother is Dominican.

Taino, conquistador, slave - who knows.

But she is light skin and nothing like me

and she is my mother and everything like me.

So what box do I fill on a census?

There is no “check here” for the children of diaspora.

So I will stick with my soap box,

Its kinda like me.

All brown and tattered and passed down

and died for.

Without any discernible postmark

for country of origin.

Because really the popular tree and

the azúcar tree are distant cousins.

With branches still trying to regrow themselves

So this is my box, my soap box.

Did I ever tell you the one about soap and Africa?

-pero