Genuflections

I came across one of Yukimi's photos--something she shot on a recent sojourn to Europe. I  was stunned when I saw it and thought it captures completely what the wash house women attempt to convey with words. I stared at the photo and was transported to the sights, smells and sounds lingering upon this waterway graced by freshly hung laundry drying between flats. If you look closely you can see a woman standing on the bridge performing a task. And although it's unclear to me what she has in her hands, she seems to be working, completely given to the task before her. It is that same energy we take and give as we work on producing the anthology. An energy that intertwines between thinking, composing, work shopping, revising, producing, surviving, longing and loving, and makin' sure ends meet for our family and for our selves. All over the world women (in particular and people in general) work...their purpose--to help their familias stay afloat, like the gondolas in the water mirrored within this image. As above, so below...I can think of no better metaphor save the bridge and its double that beholds the eye, the cypher, the recursive circle of completion. A labour of love genuflected by wash house women's voices all over the world in solidarity--crisp and curry...we bring you Lavanderia.  

Calling all laundresses...the ad hit Poets & Writers Magazine, and the submissions are rolling in by the washload. Michelle and Lucia and I met in cyberspace to strategize about upcoming dirty deeds including the soon to be launched website--in particular, the gallery of photos taken by Michelle and Yukimi in San Diego, Tijuana and Los Angeles. There is mucho trabajando ahead, but the magnitude of the anthology calls for nonetheless than the Wash House collective to roll up our sleeves, tie up our heads and get busy with the many facets of pre-production. It's a labor of love, much like the thankless job of keeping our families in clean threads. But the focus here is to unbind voices that might not ordinarily be heard. I see bubbles, like the kind I used to blow from a blue wand on my back porch when I was a little girl.  Voices, I imagine, bubbling up, out and over the top of the container. They are fragile yet full of stories and poems that are structurally sound, well crafted--encasing a spectrum of colors in all of their lovely convexity. 

Mami Wata

Signs were everywhere: Mami Wata on exhibit at UCLA's Fowler gallery.  Me and Oteezy had to go witness, so we left Inglewood and headed north on the 405. We arrived and walked across campus. Music streamed from an outdoor concert in the ampitheater in front of the museum. We entered the dark chambers of the gallery and the first thing we saw and heard was the sea broadcast across an entire wall. We stopped dead in our tracks because something unnamable was calling us: back to life...back to the vulva, back to the sacred space from which all things rise up in funkiness.  We were moved and moved again through the space taking in breath, beadwork, altars, paintings, assemblage, iron and wood sculpture of artists from places like Haiti, Sierra Leone, New York, Nigeria, Cuba, New Jersey, Brazil and Gabon. Artists who were compelled to create and consecrate Mami Wata's presence in the world. Our bodies are made up mostly of water as is the planet. Get it? We are bathed in her nourishing fluids as we develop in the amniotic sac that sustains us. No doubt we need water to hydrate lest we shrivel and sucuumb. It is the liquid of lushness that makes the creative juices overflow in the morning or evening shower. Water is healing, especially salt water which is why we add Epsons or sea salt to a therapeutic bath in order to draw out the toxins that tend to accumulate in the nooks and crannies of the mind/body cortex. Like dirty laundry, we must shake up the crud that clings to our psyches,  doing our best to purge it from our selves and our cells which are ever beginning, transforming, retooling, refreshing. The old self falls away and a new self emerges in a higher state of consciousness. Nothing is constant but change. Every day we rise we have a chance to reinvent who we are in relationship to what we do, moment by moment or in the words of Lauren, the main character in the great late Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower..."to shape God" or in Mami Wata's case, shape the Goddess within our best self.  

...Con los manos

Just rolled in to LA from San Diego about 9 a.m. Cruised down last night with Otim to make our  presence felt at the 7th Annual Illfonix soiree (KSDS 88.3 FM)  hosted by DJ Sachamo and crew. We arrived right before midnight and entered Kadan's on 30th and Adams in Normal Heights. The joint was jumpin' and we made our way over to the sidebar to get Sach Boogie's attention. A big smile lit up his face when he realized me and Otim were in the house. Later

he confessed that he had just talked smack about Otim's no-show (he sorely misses him). But Otim bees on his grind and it took several calls and gentle nudges for him to bounce outta his slave at Copy City in the Crenshaw district. Not that he minds the work, but his creative genius is wasted on running the spot. "How you gonna print up obituaries if you ain't got paper?" he said when we finally got on the road. 

...back at Kadan's ranchero, I hugged Sach ( ain't seen him in a coon's age) and he pointed over to a spot near the dance floor where Michelle was standing. I went over and in one swoop grabbed her and hugged her tight. She had just blown in that evening from Chicago O'Hare for the weekend celebration. No doubt, she was h-a-p-p-y to see me and Otim as we she--and we did our best to dance the night away, which you couldn't help but get your groove on listening to the dope dj's Sach had assembled. We caught up and got down on the dance floor along with Tinquer, Kanesha and none other than Zach Kolo from Cameroon--sportin' a Cameroonian national jersey and (you gotta love it) white patent leathers. Sandra was cuttin' up the dance floor and later that night I told her when the dj's play she becomes the music. Much flava that gyrl has in her petite mainframe. Yukimi strolled in looking like Oxun in an ankle length tank top dress. The talent in the room was overflowing and all the party people got their groove on until the bartenders shut it down.  Lovely...

We got a few zzzz's before getting back on the road. I drove (so Otim could sleep) listening to Toni Allen's Lagos No Shaking and Laila Hathawy's newest joint thinking about the beautiful things we do with our hands: Snap shutters, draw designs, vibrate vinyl, caress keys, create change. At our highest we are creators in and of the universe. How is it then that the world is mad chaotic? Our challenge, as the great late artist Romare Bearden said of his fragmented assemblage technique, is to "order chaos." I believe that and take up the challenge to compose and produce from the ashes. Think bird: Charlie Parker, fried chicken and the Phoenix rising from the cleansing fires that have direct purpose in transcending madness. Look at your hands. Create.     

Yu Gef fo Creep*...

Delila hovers seamlessly/drapes over crowded streets

in twilight dance/burgandy brown

face stoned/a burden revealing 

unknown/ silent lines

slumped sillouette singing

window pains/catches morning corner stress

she 

hums away the weariness

in stuttered sound and

muted beat

song slips around periphery/discordant sounding

un able to pass

subtly seeming

she says 

what 

of this tension teasing her

back to this place...

 

l.g. kanga

*Yu Gef fo Creep befo yu tenap: Krio for You got to crawl before you stand

Me Dirty Dirty Love

I thought I was going batty until I hung out with my gyrl LG and threw back some Hennesey on Baltimore Ave in the Illadelph. I was feeling a bit disoriented because the faces in the city of brotherly love seem bent and broken. She taught me the Krio phrase "Don't look me by the looking," which is similar to "Don't judge a book by its cover." Maybe its the fact that for two years in a row Philly heads up the list of urban centers in 'merica with the highest murder rate. Why are black folks killing each other? This is especially true when it comes to young black men in Africa's diaspora. This time back home I realize I am "just come" another Krio phrase for people coming back home from studying or living abroad. I also realize the true meaning of the words home is where the hatred is...for more reasons than not it's good to air our collective dirty laundry, even if it means breaking fragile bonds that hang by a single thread on a sagging clothesline, then reordering that chaos into an artistic expression that gives shape, form and meaning. Me, LG and Michelle met online today and discussed the forthcoming anthology. We are trying to contain the excitement and channel our energy into the work. If you stumble across this page and are inspired to write your poem, your story please send them to lavanderiazspot@gmail.com. Sometimes love's so downright dirty dirty that it repeats its own name. But if we ain't lovin' then how we livin'?

Call for Submissions

Anthology, Lavanderia: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash and Word seeks submissions: fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction signifying the metaphor of sorting, washing, ironing, folding laundry and life. www.city workspress for submission guidelines. Deadline: December 15th. Maximum 5,000 words or 5 poems. Include a bio. Email word doc submissions only to lavanderiazspot@gmail.com. 

"Take me to the dirty depths, show me a fresh face amidst the hollow masses decayed in dampened dirt, musty smells discarded as she cascades down narrow steps. I need the red dress to hand to her as she passes by, whisping away the only hope I have left, as my smile disintergrates into a dusted oblivion."

Michelle Sierra