She Gather Me 01
Happy Black History Month! It’s always a good day to be Black & I love it here ✨.
A video of Solange performing “Almeda” from her 2019 album entitled When I Get Home
Although it is only the second month of the year many events have happened that has left me uncentered. In an attempt to understand what I have been witnessing I have been turning towards the voices of the Poets who practice on & off the page.
I’m still working through the language to describe what living through these perilous times feels like. Perhaps it will make it’s way to you in a future essay or poem. For now, I wanted to share what has been keeping me going & keeping me from falling into despair. I believe paying attention is a small & powerful way to continue to engage with the world.
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” — Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
This is also an experiment in letting my mind wander, seeing what material the seams of poems rub up against, & documenting what I’ve been living alongside. Poetry does not exist in a vacum nor does it simply exist on the page. I read poems & conjure numerous other worlds inhabited by other Poets urging us to imagine with them in their mediums. Moreover, I love when my favorite poets & businesses acknowledge that we are witnessing the same things. I appreciate a pause to acknowledge what’s at stake. Therefore, inspired by Toni’s words, here is issue 01 of She Gathers Me where I gather the pieces of me & give them to you.
My mind remembers now i know what my innards say — Pat Parker
I slipped & mistakenly called the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America the other day while looking at a map. I’ve been thinking about how there is a generation coming up who will only ever know this body of water by this new name. I’ve been thinking about how many things have been renamed or stripped of any affirming language. I’ve been thinking about how many records of truth we are loosing with each passing day. Everyday my mind remembers yet the reality of the world presents something different. The brilliant Black Lesbian Poet Pat Parker explores this conundrum, holding tight to what your mind remembers & what your body knows in perilous times, in the poem below that derived from a demonstration at San Fransisco state.
I’ve been keeping my eyes on Minneapolis. Naturally, in this mind wandering experiment I turned to Minnesotan poet Danez Smith. I stumbled across a breathtaking elegy that they wrote for fellow poet Renee Nicole Good.
“Renee, poet to poet, I know you see … no, unfortunately, saw the moment for what it is. The role of us poets is to witness the world, to see with our eyes and souls the delicate threads of truth, past, and possibility around us. With attention as our tool and duty, we turn to grief, to love, to the natural world around us, to our own lives, and to our countries. Poets give what for some may be unutterable for others body, color, and sound. Hard to fool a poet; we see through everything.” — Danez Smith, “An Elegy for my Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good”
Again, in this piece that gathered me Danez’s words continue to tug on the thread of intuitive somatic knowing Pat’s poem initiated within me. We interact with an ever changing digital landscape filled with AI slop, where it is harder to discern reality, & the truth is manipulated from numerous fronts. How does one continue to strengthen the ability to trust what your mind remembers/what your innards say like as Pat urges us to? How do I continue to trust my eyes and ears like Danez writes in the last paragraph of an elegy that never should’ve needed to be written?
“Renee, I saw the video. I’ve seen the scene from every angle. I know what I saw. Despite the party’s wishes, I trust my eyes and my ears. I know you should be somewhere safe, close to your loved ones, musing on a poem to rescue our souls from the seduction of despair, the comfort of inaction, and the false safety some see in fascism. Neighbor, I know you should be alive. I know what I saw.” — Danez Smith, “An Elegy for my Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good”
3.
In this interview published on March 5th, 2025 pulitzer prize winning Poet Tracy K. Smith discuses how poetry is anti capitalist. From 6:09-7:15 Tracy provides an answer to a prompt desiring “a big picture view of the role of poetry in society today.”
“I think poety is a very vital form & force. Many of us have long felt that way. And I think that there are new readers & writers that are coming to poetry now. And some of the reasons for that, I think, are because poetry is a vocabulary that doesn’t have an initiative or motivation that’s connected to the market. It’s actually isn’t trying to sell you something. It’s trying create a pathway in for you to access a large, full, & fluent version of yourself. And I believe that’s a version of the self that we are swindled out of, in a lot of ways, by the culture that we live in. We have a lot of devices and products and platforms that are seeking to capture our attention, monetize our attention, & replace our innate vocabulary with something that serves their ends…serves their purposes.” — Tracy K. Smith
Pat, Danez, & now Tracy are all discussing the “innate vocabulary” that lives within us as an essential quality to stay rooted within. Especially when systems benefit & profit off of a severance from yourself. Poetry is one way to continue trusting what we see. Writing my poems, practicing deep breathing, letting myself truly feel when the world is demanding that I cary on are other ways. I believe fostering one’s innate vocabulary also includes looking around you to your community, kin, & sites of memories instead of looking to constantly move up.
On the phone with a dear friend recently I said y’all aren’t bored & disgusted enough for me in regard to celebrities & business as usual. We need to start cutting our eyes more at people whose ideas of success is achieving individual security without it being rooted in challenging systems. Poetry is transformative. The Poetic form does not ask us to buy into a more “chic” or “cool” version of yourself through the purchasing of an aesthetic good. Poetry lets us regain our attention, wonder, & question the world we are bearing witness to. Tracy also wrote one of my favorite books I read in December of 2025 which you can read about below.
While Poetry is anti capitalist, in the fact that the form doesn’t sell you anything, I still believe Poets deserve to be paid for the alchemizing work they do. Being reliant or waiting in precocity to be granted a few prestigious prizes, that may not be aligned with a Poet’s values, is a liminal space I want to change especially for Black Poets. If you are looking for a way to support Black Poets in Black History Month then consider donating to MONSTERA below.
Donate & learn more about MONSTERA: A Guaranteed Income Program for Black Poets by clicking the button below. Become a member of the sprawling unrestricted support system by becoming a monthly donor. All monthly donors of any amount are able to nominate Black Poets to receive guaranteed income!
4.
To retain my Portuguese I am always listening to Brazilian music, films, tv shows, podcasts, etc. I love seeing other people also engage with Brazilian culture in these ways. Since many mainstream musicians are not reflecting the times as Nina Simone encouraged artists to do I have been listening to older songs. “Tenha Fé” by Os Originais do Samba was released in 1972 a little over half way into the Brazilian dictatorship that lasted for 21 years.
Above, I have included a short version of the song with english translation. Here, you can find the full song for your listening pleasure.
While this song has helped me to gather myself so has the Oscar wining film entitled Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) (2025). Ainda Estou Aqui won the 2025 Oscar for best international feature making history as the first Brazilian produced film to win an Academy Award. If you are looking to be comforted then I suggest just listening to the song. However, if you are a student of history who must situate the art you engage with in the context it was created then the film will be a tender addition (as it mirrors many of the things happening in our present day). In general, I believe as a Black Feminist we have a lot to learn from Brasil & other struggles for freedom around the world.
While we are on the topic of a coup d’état I also learned a lot by watching Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.
If you choose to watch the beautiful jazz composition that is Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat then I believe engaging with the work of Hazel Scott provides the perfect double bar line to end. I’ve been playing “Takin’ a Chance” by Hazel a lot after watching the PBS Masters film entitled The Disappearance of Miss Hazel. Many things are disappearing all around us & I’m grateful there are counter narratives in the archives that can be summoned to provide the truth. I’m thinking of memory, how Toni said they straightened out the Mississippi (“The Site of Memory”), how in the trailer of the film someone said “everything is done to remove you from public memory,” & I’m thinking of how to keep my body present in a world of ruins while imagining something more.
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