Tonight I got an amazing chance to read a work of poetry & recite from a collection of essays in tribute to the literary giant, Toni Morrison. I couldn’t believe how many people came together tonight in New Orleans to share stories, anecdotes & personal memories with Toni herself. In total and complete awe. Having personally been so deeply touched by her fiction, on the day she passed, I hopped in my car to jot down the following words as a means of catharsis and as a way to continuously be reminded that writing has never been about pretty words for me — it is ritual. eternally sacred, a birthing process and a means of holding, in my hands, a personal history that centers my story :
A mother, a mother
One who didn’t know
She raised me
On sliced tongue
Cutting the fabric of reality
Weaving what was
Into its natural state:
Everything
As it should be.
I wonder if she knew
Poetry as smooth
As Bitches Brew
That she would bear
A generation of wolves
Defining themselves as women
Howling
Treacherously
From her tenderness
Howling sweet honied truths
At the moon.
I wonder if she knew
That the singing bones
hanging Loose
Begotten ancestral fruit
Hanging from an ancient tree
Would come to be
Eons of poetry
Stemming from you
Stemming from me.
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#poetry #tonimorrison #neworleans #honorthegreats
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