I know I have been gone for a while but this year is calling me back here…
As full of grief as this year has been, it has also laid the groundwork for new inspirations within me. One of the projects I have coming up is a Reading & Discussion series for Lewis Latimer House Museum and sponsored by Humanities NY about the work of Audre Lorde and her championing the power of speaking (you can sign up for it here). This morning, while listening to the radio, I heard KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and The Cherry Tree,” and what struck me about this song was once again this fear of blackness and darkness that is pervasive in this world. Thinking about the black horse, I remembered Audre Lorde’s The Black Unicorn collection of poetry and opened it to reread it again. Rereading Lorde’s work after hearing the song, it reminded me of the reason for rewriting my tagline as The SunKWholic (K)Nub: RK/V-V/KR (Reimagining The Past (+Sense) Manifesting The Future) and its explanation on my about page, of wanting to speak my blackness as a wholeness of being. Reading the collection, I saw it as an archive and that the Black Unicorn was a revelation of a living archive. A project I plan to start next year will explore this concept more, but in the meantime, here is a poem I was inspired to write from Lorde and Tunstall’s works:
Black UniKorn & A KWhole Tree
“In spite of the fire’s heat, the tongs can catch it.”
Let the heart grow ink in the chest
Speak
Wander & Break Open
Record Itself
A Khorus of Memory
In the middle of Now/Here
An aRK/V A true iKoN of Itself
Its own bearing of
Victory: Filling Itself
On the (K)Why of Its fury
Opens the door to release It from Its cage
That di/vides Itself from Itself
Open to the Di/vines:
The symbol & shadow into one
Allowing it to feed on Itself until it Just/Is
Not a shadow that follows the other’s ideology of supremacy
Not a symbol deciphered as De/Monster
But a Visible of an Invisible Moving Hype
A force speaking Its meaning for Itself
Sherese Francis: Futuristically Ancient 