Our superpower is presence, the presence of multitudes in our every breath. In the photo we are staring at the care bears. Been a busy day: Dawn just got back from two weeks on retreat at Spirit Rock, and we had a lot to catch up on, sitting in a backyard garden. who dance through me. the downfall of drummed up debt worldwide But knowing that my ancestors and all the no longer embodied can only come be part of this celebration on earth if I create one, a celebration, a portal for their love to stream through for me but also beyond me to you and all of us makes me realize that the work of celebration is crucial. It is love. And is it not?”. It is an act of vulnerability. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive. 

After Audre Lorde’s “Peace on Earth”, a star fell last night It is this form of never and before and beyond that will allow me to actually allow myself to feel safe enough with you to be held and beheld without fear of what this world has taught you to steal, siphon off or misrepresent about me. I want to honor the people, the elements the energy that continually gives me this gift I am calling life. who open up between me . This picture reminds me to remember that what supports and protects me is not actually the clarity of my vision. who designate exactly me. Articles. i’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with food, specifically, i have had periods of home-cooked deliciousness and many more periods of brightly packaged poison. an ethical escape, and told myself "More about them: They made the radical and brave decision to publish writings only by … We keep a pact with the universe to help each other return to the source that we came from. I think about nourishment, and exhaustion and dreams. Especially coming from a family of hustlers. I miss my Dad. This is us also in October on my first swingset, branded by Crayola. For at least my whole adult life navigating Thanksgiving with family has been a series of difficult decisions. A significant percentage of the food I eat is grown by people who I am growing with spiritually and intellectually in this lifetime. God? “Sista Docta” Alexis Pauline Gumbs is well-versed in the intersections of harm. 

After Audre Lorde’s “Thanks to Jesse Jackson”, say it like bridge To receive love from every direction, in every form. Today. what alexis wrote made me think of our mindfulness practice of focusing on breath, paying notice when it has remained unnoticed for so long. I listened to “Let it Go pt.2” by the Beautiful Chorus this morning and allowed their ocean of repetition to unclench me. I celebrate all the love that I am experiencing in this time that is also shaped by my grief and by missing so many people whom I love. How it burns to become bright on behalf of those who have left us here to hold their light while we can. And so we poison the water and the air. For the past 21 days I have been limiting my salt intake, clearing a path for more ancestral love to come through, helping myself release whatever deposits have collected from uncried tears and holding it together. as I drove myself P.S. If I can really be with the dark parts of myself, the underground, the shadowed aspects of my life and my journey I will learn so much more, love myself deeper, rest enough to grow in invisible ways. Or how everything that made us reminds us that it will reclaim us. The moment of this picture was not my first experience of the ocean, but it was an early one. The wonderful thing about being a fool is this rainbowed open heart. when we eat our words In this time when many of us are feeling the grief of not being able to share joy in person with the loved ones we have lost, or who we cannot be with because of the safety concerns brought on by a pandemic that never had to go this far and kill this many, it is important to me that we remember that joy is not limited by space or time. Wondering if you are even worthy of support? And what do the environmental changes, the changes we can feel on the surface of our skin teach us about the deeper mysteries of change, how life moves through us and beyond us. almost out of gas, tires pattern bald If what is within is less dense than what surrounds me, I can float. This unavoidable failure. This is our love. While with every new accomplishment I feel the longing for his witness, the sound of his voice in celebration, the hug, the words of pride and affirmation, I am grateful for the undeniable presence of his energy with me and in the world through those same moments. Yes. Literally. Product details. It is a dance comprised by a group of people holding hands. My father passed away the October my first single-authored book came out. who rise under me. Again. Though words distinguishing the proper use of property have been with me from the very beginning I am learning to read another way. But that feeling of longing and reaching, of loving and becoming, I wonder if even this whole universe is but an index for that uncontainable energy. The concluding volume in a poetic trilogy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise. The concluding volume in a poetic trilogy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise. She is the author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity and the co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. Every day. Or how we move through and beyond these bodies. Or how we hold in this form for a moment, destined to disintegrate into our component elemental origin futures. i’m so glad the retreat was/is so filling, and you continue on. It teaches me something that even though the journey was prompted by a solemn occasion, the love that was my great grandmother’s legacy, her mothering impact on her own children but also many grandchildren, daughter’s in law, community members was not closed off when she was buried. This year the time travel will not be visiting a childhood neighborhood or eating familiar foods inconsistent with my current dietary practices. Mama caught this photo of my dad breathing a blessing right into the top of my head. Turn to her when you long to be reminded of how connected and resilient we all are. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. Of course the blood pumping valve, central metronome of my breathing is a muscle. Today is the birthdate of my 5th book, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. My stardust daughterhood has always been here. think out loud reshaping That when a loved one dies, what was an earthly relationship becomes a cosmic relationship. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. What a blessing! The prayers they breathe into our crowns perpetually. who whisper into me. from skating the edge The concluding volume in a poetic trilogy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise. And yet. then the river run right who laugh around me. Not to clothe in armor. Share. A queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, a prayer-poet priestess, an Afro-Caribbean grandchild, a scholar, an educator, and an author just to name a few. I am remembering an older knowledge of who you are and who you can be. Redding is a verb and an adjective for the heat and urgency of emergence alive and radiant with becoming. Books by Alexis Pauline Gumbs . So many of us feel far away from love and with no quick hope of traveling nearer during this season. All of our relationships are. Over at the City Lights blog: Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press, talks about Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, founded circa 1980 by Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, "and other Black feminists after a meeting of African American and African Caribbean women in Boston. What a gift that all this joy will not be contained to my one life here on earth. How supportive the ocean actually is to my life. All the time. Dirty, divine and evergreen. Her doctors gave her 6 months. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. Each day to let even more love come through. Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise. It does rush through every pore. Of course they deserve to breathe easy and to know that life-supporting love is their divine gift to receive, not a scarce exception they have to learn. growing hot and irresistible Of the love that’s there behind all of it. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. Thank you for being with us! Twitter Feed. who breathe with me. Thanksgiving has meant conversations to have and not have. Again. Alexis is the founder of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind. Of disintegrating into all this desire to have and hold and touch and preserve the unpreservable. I am like this planet, seeking alignment. She studied and got her PhD from Duke University in English, African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. Stability? I wonder if you know how much you weigh. May we make ourselves into good food, nourishing energy and matter for the future our love implies. I am in form the energy of he who now lives formless throughout the galaxy. My heart is not a muscle. Pout of a girl who knows that she is loved. You deserve to float. With open pores all over the surface of your life. Those are the only words to the song “let it go.” For me, this is the solstice of the clear path. In the past I have been called “tone-deaf” (an ableist term) for finding gratitude and something to celebrate in the midst of terrible circumstances. Glad you enjoy them, Karma Tenzing! I certainly look like I don’t know what is going on. I don’t know if you are like me, but sometimes I feel shy about celebrating who I am, especially in times where so much is hard. Spoiler alert, he did not create a financial structure that left us all independently wealthy, though I think he tried. The poet is known for weaving the past, present, and future together—from environmental issues to the transatlantic slave trade—and offering up possibilities for caring for one another in the face of widespread harm. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is an American writer, independent scholar, poet, activist and educator based in Durham, North Carolina. This set of poems is inspired by Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Marlene Nourbese Philip and many more.” How your impact moves through air. What attention would we give our food, where would we pause to eat, who would we eat near if food was to our bodies what breath is to our spirits? A transformation I attend to and observe closely through a number of practices and through the hundreds of poems I have written about, for, to and with my father in the intervening time. What faces do we make to brace for the brightness of sun, the razor sharp wind of sand. is the table we build by sharing, train our tongues to be trans who smile surrounding me. A passageway, variously constricted or open. By my mother holding an archive of every age of me. Much respect back and forth…, Copyright © 2019 Buddhist Peace Fellowship. It is a completely clear no. when the boil-over of desire who teach … The superpower of a beloved scalp moisturized. Sun rise. For Roberto Tijerina At the peak of the Leonids meteor shower. But you can see it in the picture, the way joy spreads, the way our connection to each other’s joy teaches us that joy, like any energy, is not individually held but already shared. But what comes through. And to share it. The thing about getting into the water is that at first you feel the boundaries of your skin differently than you could in air. I love you with my laughter and my tears. into places to sit and meet What support actually feels like. when each word and the heirloom seed-bomb airlift The work that I do in the world, the spirit work of black feminist love, is supported financially and spiritually by a community of people known and unknown to me who make themselves fellow travelers in my journey by so many shapes of saying yes. Protection from drowning? It is taking me a long time to learn this. It matters to me that one poem is dedicated to someone who I know personally and have worked in community with and two are dedicated to strangers who have supported my work without knowing me personally. You deserve to float. Soft spot of memory. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer Black feminist love evangelist who lives in Durham, North Carolina. A place to stand? But from here I keep staring at you. Hello everyone — sorry today’s post is so late! when something is imagined in ways that i had not yet seen, it seeps through me far and wide. But to surrender this great portal of my heart. What can these two beings, the young father and the wise infant teach me now about the breathing that I do now that he breathes no more? The prayer of your perfect … I do. who protect by me. These two archangel ancestors especially, that supports me to move into a future so bright I can’t describe it. And the edges of the picture and the finitude of our embodiment, the fact that sun could burn us, that salt wears us away, that this is all that there is left to touch and neither my touching hands nor this well kept photo album will live forever…all of that is painful. Table of Contents Back to Top PMS during #negrosolstice. But still I have the experience some days of consuming food that is filling without being nourishing. It's the concluding volume in a trilogy that began with Spill, and continued with M-Archive. “I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. In this poem I receive instead of resisting my father’s wish that I have all good things and grace and ease in life. The concluding volume in a poetic trilogy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise. By Alexis Pauline Gumbs | Dec 31 2020. A few weeks ago with the help of my first computerized telescope (a gift from Sangodare) and the advice of my youngest brother Seneca about the rare proximity of Mars, I saw one of the moons of Mars. Sadness doesn’t keep. The part mama combed between my afro-puffs, portal where dreams come to earth. It is easy for me to know the truth of that when I look at the young people in my life. Is that calm exasperation on my father’s face the same expression he would make when I called him from college outraged about US bombings and he would remind me nothing in the history of the US nation state should have me expect anything different. Right now, I am clear that there were many times in his life, and especially as he faced death, when he thought about what structures would support his children after he was not longer embodied on earth. I think about the future we deserve and who that future is asking us to be. called father        float       foundation. Joy is contagious seems like a strange thing to say during a pandemic. Joy moves through us. This is why a new book by National Humanities Center Fellow Alexis Pauline Gumbs called Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals caught … Is it death or birth. Poetry reading by Staceyann Chin and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, followed by a conversation with Kaiama L. Glover (Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies, Barnard College). on autopilot, and where did it land But I deserve to float. These poems are my attempt to bring that moment, photographed by my mother into language for moments like this when I need it. To be strong enough to open my heart to you. fore I wake up. Really I would rather live through this with you than be right. Dad still in the throes of his Saturn return, that time when all the lessons you have been able to avoid in your life come at you in a form that you cannot ignore. In 1992. (Some of y’all hear the aquatic version of your favorite Song of Solomon quote in there.) Oceans of it. Alexis Pauline Gumbs reads her poem, "Mixed Use." First the banks My relationship to my father continues to change, and it is tangled with the stories I am unlearning about lynching and what violence built here on sacred lands. And protects me is not limited by what I know he would empathize with actually to! 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