Strike a Prose: UnSeen #1

Strike a Prose: UnSeen #1

Last week, I attended the first of three in a series of Strike a Prose workshops focusing on the UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light exhibit. This exhibit addresses race, gender, history, nation-building, museum studies, and is basically the sum of my graduate work in one, jaw-dropping exhibit. Ken Gonzalez-Day examines racial difference by placing statues in conversation with one another. Another selection of Gonzalez-Day erases the victims of lynchings, forcing the viewer to look at those in attendance. Titus Kaphar changes the conversation around national myths by deliberately changing, altering, reflecting, marring, etc., portraits. They are both stunning. Please go see this exhibit, at the National Portrait Gallery, or pop in online.

For one piece, I sat across from this piece, by Titus Kaphar and wrote. We were given a poem (They Tell Me I Am Lost) by Native poet Maurice Kenny to consider. 

They tell me that our stories are worthless;

Be good girls,
Repeat our myths,
Smile,
Be pleasing to the eye,

Don't disrupt.

Don't alter.
Don't make waves.

They tell me our stories take away from the noble words, spilled from the mouths of men
that for generations, sculpted a nation,
like a sculptor sculpts a vase,
but with a hammer.

Their shallow vision
willful ignorance
closed eyes
do not change our truths.

That when we tell our stories, our poems,
the truths etched on our souls,
pain laid bare,
wounds torn open,
souls picked apart,

We find that we are not pleasing, not noble.
That we possess our own truths.
Some the same.
Some not.

That our collective hum is deafening.
That shame set free can no longer hold us back.
That we are brimming over with worth.

They feed us lies
because they are afraid of those they have silenced.

Poem #2: Secrets

Secrets are currency.
She with the secrets is wealthy.
Those of others are light, dollar bills.
Our own are coins, heavy like lead.

A weight we carry,
that pools in our stomachs,
presses on our shoulders,
A burden.

Some feel like shame
like damnation
like bright red fire ants, eating from stomach to skin.

A secret, given breath,
to a friend,
a lover,
the world,
oneself,
is like alchemy,
turning lead into helium
that floats easily,
and returns to the atmosphere.

No longer a burden,
no longer shameful.

A gift,
to the universe.