The same thing I am praised for, is the same thing people try to snatch me for—this thing I do with these 26 letters.
In the face of abject crazy which is the current world, I would be remiss in my duties as a writer not to speak or record it. When I decided to lean into writing, being a writer as a career, I knew what I was getting into—what it would cost, and what I aimed to do in it.
This is the thing I love, communication and the art of word play. It’s what I do. It’s legit what I do. And for the love of it, I happen to write down my imagination to sell to people. I keep pens on hand, my desk is covered in papers and my laptops are always running out of space.
This, indeed, is my sweet spot.
Love and blessings,
JBHarris
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As a young girl, the thrill of the holiday was never the food…but the sounds. I was excited because I would get to hear and see all these people that I hadn’t seen all year, or not often enough. I would get to hear stories, hear dialects and Englishes, and ruckus laughter. There was always laughter at Thanksgiving.
In my 34th fall, this is the first holiday that have not cooked and incorporated my own family into the greater of my family at large. As I wrote in the effigy at my grandmother Arceal Williams’s funeral, I wrote that her home was a place you “gathered strength and peace and prepare for war, before going back into the wide, wide world.” Her house was a focal point, my steady place, my rock when all else seemed questionable.
I visited this same place not even two weeks ago, and it was akin to a cemetery. There were relics, dust—the ashes of love—everywhere. There was a quiet there I had not known until that moment. It was the stillness one could only see and on the other side of the grass where eyes to be opened in soil. There was no stove, no fridge, no evidence of the life which was there, the lives grown there like same soil of her garden inundated with vines now.
On this day of Thanks,I am thankful for being able to be a part of the greater, to become the greater, to relay the greater. I am thankful for being able to see on THIS side of the grass. I am thankful for the amalgum that is my family…it is beyond blood now–I have been adopted, redopted and engrafted all before this time. I am thankful for this legacy that I now call love and family.May we all continue to laugh.
This is the essay which will be in the anthology STORIES OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE to be published by the St. Louis County Public Library. -JBH
I am a Black woman.
I am a Black woman whose grandparents were enslaved, sharecroppers, and whose parents are college educated. The American Experience for me is based around words, narratives, and oral traditions—it is no wonder I am a writer.
With this artistic designation, I am aware the thing which I am good at, have gotten accolades for, recognition regarding—would have gotten me murdered 159 years ago! For the desire of learning, for my natural inclination and proclivity for language, would have gotten me murdered.
When I reconcile the American Experience with my cultural and personal history, I am forced to admit the same thing which has freed me, killed my ancestors. The dexterity of language, my verbal acrobatics, and my slick mouth would have made me a ‘woman most unruly’…if I was White. Since I have no hope of whiteness, as a Black woman, I would have been the mare needing to be broken under field work, whips, or tree limbs.
I reconcile that history, that most American ancestry for the enslaved, and I determine to say everything that my grandparents could never say. I make it an effort put pen to paper, letters on screen for visibility.
Or spite. Either will do.
Nikki Giovanni says, “Rage is to writers what water is to fish.” Indeed, Nikki. It is that rage I seek to understand, to source, and which fuels the things which need to be said! I grab it, dig it up, and put fiction, prose, or poem to it.
My way has been paid for me, through time and sorrow. There is a need in me now to express, critique, submit and record. From there, I am a dragon of my own making; my Phoenix tattoo substantiates that. So, indeed let the rage be the fuel.
I breathe fire. I will leave a mark. I must! The generation coming depends on it.
To grab this book on Amazon or Kindle, click here.
I have written fast before, but this? This book poured out of me.
Through the lack of social media, and the uncanny nature of my own life, I have found my childhood sweetheart. For respect, I won’t give his name here, but he knows this book exists.
If you know you know.
I have not seen him in 21 years, and yet he remembers the last thing I wore, and I saw him before he saw me.
I all but ran to him. Hugged him. And the world fell away. No, that is not an exaggeration.
For those feelings, for the power of that connection, I wrote! In being transparent, this was the man I thought I would marry.
There are attributes of this connection I have looked for in other relationships–to this day (I mean #ForeverBae plays Poker AND Chess!)!
This chap book is a reminder to me that…maybe I am still a love poet after all. As and maybe (just maybe) this is a reminder to younger me that I wasn’t crazy–and neither was he.
Being a love poet, during social change is interesting. As you confront things around you which need, love, accountability, and justice… There is something in you that is overjoyed when you can be reconciled to that first work: love.
Knowing people that you care for sale in the world, that they are well, and that life has treated them well so far. Perhaps that is the justice of being a love poet… Love will always be your light, heat, and smoke. 
His voice sounds like how whiskey tastes dark and hot making you forget all your problems with one look or one sip should you be gracious enough to handle what comes with no chaser— what girl wouldn’t want the guy who was able to chase the monsters away, being able to see what fear looks like and towards it in something that is all American muscle because as we know:
“Driver picks the music passenger shuts his cakehole…”
Brother. Father. Lover. Demon.
the embodiment of wishes and dreams, In leather jackets And glass green eyes Hiding more Than the mouth will Ever say
given to us over and over again through John and Mary, big brother to Sam, Cass, Jack & Adam And the vessel of the most fearsome Michael— it is to him that we owe restless nights and quiet mornings and to know that whatever is in the closet under the bed Or watching From outside he’s got to go through him first.
The job a prophet is tell the truth in love. There is a prophet in every poet and a poet, in every prophet.
Truth must be revealed no matter what is going on.
Hope must be given, despite the grief and circumstances!
I believe more poets are like Jeremiah: knowing the truth and no one‘s going to believe until all of law be fulfilled.
For the prophet, poetry is the vehicle we deliver truth, love, and fire.
There must be something we leave, we retain, that we reckon to remember—poets are the guardians of conscience, culture and circumstances. At the fall of the human will, when the soul is in despair—there we will be amongst the wreckage and rubble of suffering.
You must leave hope and do your work. Trust and believe it is worth it! To leave hope in the—world is to pick are the lock on Pandora’s box through the intention of all things.
I Breathe Fire 