Love Letter To Self

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

Beloved ☀

Nocturna by Maya Motayne

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno Garcia

We Set the Dark on Fire by Taylor Kay Mejia

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova

Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Charlie Hernandez & The League of Shadows by Ryan Calejo

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Cordova

Blanca & Roja by Anna- Marie McLemore

Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibañez

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

wislawa szymborska, “cassandra” (x)

seamus heaney, “mycenae nightwatch” (x)

annie finch, “chain of women” (x)

adam zagajewski, “persephone goes underground again” (x)

louise glück, “persephone the wanderer” (x) and “the empty glass” (x)

kathleen raine, “medea” (x)

elizabeth ballou, “ariadne and the minotaur” (x)

p.k. page, “this heavy craft” (x)

peter kline, “minotaur” (x)

alfred lord tennyson, “demeter and persephone” (x)

ted hughes, “prometheus on his crag” (x)

margaret atwood, “orpheus (1)” (x), “orpheus (2)” (x), “eurydice” (x) and “siren song” (x)

H.D., “sea-heroes” (x), “delphi” (x), “eurydice” (x), “helen” (x), “thetis” (x), “leda” (x), “hermonax” (x), “apollo at delphi” (x), pallinode, and eidolon

jack conway, “the agamemnon rag” (x)

marina tsvetaeva, “praise to aphrodite” and “the sibyl” and “eurydice to orpheus” (x)

blas falconer, “to orpheus” (x)

jorge luis borges, “to the one who is reading me” (x) and “oedipus and the riddle” (x)

sappho, “hymn to aphrodite” (x) and fragment 102, “blame aphrodite” (x)

william carlos williams, “landscape with the fall of icarus” (x)

muriel rukeyser, “waiting for icarus” (x)

josé emilio pacheco, “new sisyphus” (x)

anne sexton, “to a friend whose work has come to triumph” (x)

edna st. vincent mallay, “daphne” (x)

shakespeare, venus and adonis and “orpheus” (x)

christopher marlowe, “hero and leander”

derek walcott, omeros and “sea grapes” (x) and “europa” (x)

denise levertov, “hymn to eros” (x)

judy grahn, “paris and helen” (x)

alice oswald, memorial

dorothy parker, “penelope” (x)

anne carson, autobiography of red

yusef komunyakaa, “infidelity” (x)

rainer maria rilke, “orpheus. eurydice. hermes.” (x)

—

Z.B

Lady Icarus