It is of the rolling of
Water in muddy rivers
That give the rebel
To the Belles along
Mississippi banks–
Give roar to what
Should have been
Whisper.
Gave power in havoc
Passion in chaos
And Anna became
Tina to tell us
How to get over
And the end of
One life is the
Gift of another.
The ancestral is God’s memory after all.
that is memory
Is gifted as
Music.
-JBHarris, 5.24.2023
Written after the passing of Tina Turner at age 83. STL KIDS CHANGE THE WORLD.
Note: The line “No Black boys die on Mother’s Day” is taken from the poem of the same name from the book A PECULIAR PEOPLE by Steven Willis.
On the Internet,
there’s always
a thread going
that wishes mothers
happy Mother’s Day.
the one day
of the year
that the women
who are charged with
running the world are
supposed to put their feet up–
and yet the feet are up
and at’em
making sure kids
faces are washed
Breakfast is made
and coffee may be
sipped cold–
if at all.
on Mother’s Day,
we celebrate the
mothers of queer children
Disgarded and forgotten
By family of their births
the mothers who
are aunties by blood,
mothers who do
the job of mothering
when no one else would
whether it be in classrooms,
boardrooms, or in laundromats.
mother is both
noun and verb–
and because it is both-
–a thing and an action–
it is constantly needed
I know there was a poet
that one time that said
“no Black boys die on Mother’s Day”
because life is present
wherever a mother may be
Or lay their heads.
Happy Mother’s Day
to the women who
decided to mother,
even when they did
not know how
happy Mother’s Day
to the women who
stand in the gap,
and fill the gap,
and know how
to slap
away all things
by which attack the
children that are
in their charge.
Because trust and believe
no village is complete without a mother…
It is the women of your blood
that have gotten you this far.
It is the women of
your understanding
and of your ancestral forgetting
who have gotten you
to a place
by which you,too,
can step into the realm
known as mother.
Whether your womanhood be new
Forming, learned or Ancient,
because we know the ancient of days is also an us…
Happy Mother’s Day
is the whisper of breezes
through open windows
on summer nights
is why we fight
it is how we rage
against the dying
of the light…
go on mother we see you.
-JBHarris, 5.14.23
This year was introspective for me.
I was forced to think about things I was scared to, while making room for myself. I think the presumption is poets will have this never-empty, never-ending reservoir to soothe or settle those that read our thoughts.
I’m always humbled for it by anyone who reads my work or is inspired by it. Sometimes the wells we pull from for others, are dug by our own hands–watered by own tears!
Yet, we write.
We create.
We serve. Make no mistake: a poet is a servant. Perhaps this is why Baldwin said it is a horrible tragedy when a nation ceases to produce poets.
The poet remembers what everyone else forgets—and gives light when all is lost. On this, perhaps, hangs humanity.
What do I do
Now when what you
Left me with
Haunts me…
And with all resolve
As faith gives
I send it back to
You.
The love was mine—this is mine.
I give this back to you!
I will not leave you to rest!
When it calls to you
from the depths of
what you thought
was dead
to quicken you
with kisses warm
and love a deep
reminding you of just
what you held on
for the glimpses of
future hidden in
past if I were
To just give you
more time
“You know
I love you
You know
she cannot be
what you are to me…”
Wait for me
you are my heart
love of my life…
there’s a chance
wake me from
summer willing my heart
to start all over again
so the wedding
won’t be so hard
this time perhaps
-JBHarris, July 2021
Note: This piece will be in THE DEATH OF PETER PARKER & OTHER FAIRY TALES (August 2023).
In the myriad of hours
that I count since
counting you
as part of my hours
And days taking
your smile
your laugh
your joys
into all considerations
I wonder
is there ever truly room
for me in your hours
And days
to be counted
important among?
Counted enough
to be worthy
to be chosen.
From the pondering
I find myself wanting…again
-JBHarris, December 2021
when they tell you
to write your bio,
tell them your pronouns
are try and me.
when they ask
your job description
your designation,
your pay rate
tell them you are
a troublemaker,
and you were
born to be a problem.
Show them your skin tone
the color of sun–
of the most excellent Earth,
by which your ancestors
were chained to,
brought from
you have every right
to exist
to challenge
to be
and be outspoken
even when your voice shakes.
be in the room
to bring others in
the room.
Let nothing be the same after us.
In this the holiest
of representation
of the I in us,
and we in them,
no, and we be the people
by which they represent.
We are going nowhere.
We are whom your ancestors
Warned about:
Melanin-wrapped memory.
Whom are called and unbowed
We are here and are coming.
There is no door locked us
because we will
bust out windows.
Change is here.
Let it continue with us.
-JBHarris, 4/7-2023
Written in response to the 2 Tennessee Representatives expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives in April 2023. They were expelled because they were demanding gun reform. On 4/7, they were reinstated.
This nation has spent the majority of her history, all of her history, getting free labor from Black women: skilled/unskilled labor, child labor, and emotional labor.
This nation does not know how to function without the suffering of Black women; us having to shrink to fit a white aesthetic, or into a white room. So many times we as Black women have to adjust to the climate of a room, to dial back our blackness, to hold our tongues, or change it in order to appease whiteness.
Yet, we know that whiteness can create nothing, but mimics everything. That which you cannot mimic—it will erase. The speed it which this nation will try and honor Black women, whether that be at the end of their lives, or posthumously, so as not to see their faces. To not honor that which they have already born life, limb and blood to accomplish, despite everything being said against them!
The Villain is always us. The villain is always us because this nation does not know what it’s like to not have a nigg3r.
Did not Baldwin in his prophetic genius warn us about this? This nation needs to reckon with why it needs such anunder class! Also, why it needs its underclass to be Black.
The villain is always Black women, because the pedestal was never made for the weightiness of blackness… It was only made to exploit it. The fact that Angel Reese is the most current victim of this country’s villainization is nothing new!
This nation, it is most important that white women protected. In order for that to be so, it must save them from savage,uppity Negresses.
Yet, who is really the savage?
Amy Garvey wrote in 1925 in her essay HISTORY IS A WEAPON that if there is any woman that is worthy of honor and respect, it is the Black woman. As quickly as black women ascend to pedestals—even if they build them out of the mud themselves!— the moment that we do not perform as the three ring, circus known as America, wants us to, it is quick to snatch us from it!
As if we are dependent upon it.
Whenever a Black woman makes her space, owns her space outside of whiteness, the moment that whiteness does not receive gratitude or believe our gratitude to be insincere, it dismisses us.
Yet, we have no need to be defined by whiteness. We have no desire to have our standard be based in whiteness! Black women are now rejecting this. The question really is, what kind of Black woman makes you safe? Because whiteness is known to kill those Black women too.
-JBH, 4.3.2023
This day is powerful because my best friend asked me to contribute a work to her project. I started blogging 4 months before, and had published 4 books via Amazon with the decade old poems that I had (Love Songs Of The Unrequited, Volumes 1-3).
I had no idea how all this would shake out, or go forward. I was stepping into a place familiar and foreign.
I was asked to add my voice to something—and I was honored. The Awakenings Project was an incubator for me as an artist, space holder, platform builder and…griot.
That piece (FIRST, AWAKENINGS) gave the mantra: “I AM SHE, SHE ARE WE.
I consider this my spoken word birthday!
It was my introduction into a world I had dreamt of as a girl with the active imagination! It is a mixture of love, relief and power whenever I remember this night.
I am grateful to my best friend who believed more in me than the man whom wanted to spend his life with me. Who still does believe in me.
Thank you, Marissa.
Thank you, The Awakenings Project.
The written word will always have power. No matter if it is in pen and paper, light in screen, or pencil etchings, and a notebook. As long as human beings have the power to record their own narratives, there will always be two sides to every story!
for the cars, it is essential that we understand just how important gatekeeping of language is, that language will still always invite intimacy, and it is important for minority people to have their story told as well.
it is for the want to control the narrative that Christ was made white, right?
as long as I as a writer, who identifies as black and female, have the resources at the ready to tell my story? I am going to tell it! I’m going to tell it because it needs to be told. There is an intimacy that goes along with this black, female experience that can only be reconciled, and understood by other Black people, and especially other black women. My language lends itself to, and towards that intimacy and experience!
If you take my words for me, you are actively engaging in my erasure! just because you can use a word that is used by people in a community that you are ingratiate it in, that you grew up around, does not mean you have the freedom to use that language, those words in a contacts reserve just for the people in that community and experience!
It’s deeper than, “You can’t say that.“
You can’t say that because you haven’t lived that.
“Language invites permission.” -JBH
My best friend is Sicilian. There are words she and her family says that I can’t. It is the for the respect of her, her experiences, but I don’t repeat those words.
They are not mine to say.
Most communities have trauma-inducing words: some language has a history of harm. Because language involves intimacy, acknowledgment, and intelligence, it is essential that we understand that they are just some words you don’t say. Or if you do say them, you have to deactivate the trauma, they may be within them.
Then the greater question becomes: who owns language? While there is no easy answer to this, there is a resolution to it.
The resolution to this is found in respect. The person who is speaking, who has the experience to convey their thought, and share their intimacy, through conversation. They are the ones who own the language of that space.
if you were not the person in the space, by which the language, the idea, or experience is geared toward or taken from, you are not essential to the conversation – you are a participant and an active listener in the conversation.
I Breathe Fire 