#012 Autumn Days via Autumn LaBella

Peace family, 

I have experienced a spiritual reset these days following the Autumn Equinox. Call me superstitious, but I really believe that this time of year was made especially for me. I've always felt a strong connection to my name (my matriarch of a grandmother on my mother's side named me, I have my father's family surname). Ancestors wrote that our names help bring forth our destiny; I always wonder how my grandmother knew that I needed this time of year to let nature bathe me in gratitude and colorful orchestras of plant life. How did she know that I needed a season of shedding people, thoughts, and habits that no longer serve my soul all to myself? Even then she saw in my almond shaped eyes an illuminated future that life's trials would try to dim. The bite of the fall breeze may mellow some, but this time of year makes me feel more present and purposeful than I do in any other season. 

Seven autumns ago, on my twentieth birthday, one of my dearest girlfriends wrote eloquently on folded gold-trimmed card stock: 

Autumn

the time of year when everything bursts with it's last beauty,

as if nature had been saving up for the grand finale.

I still have the card hanging in my room on a wall of lifelong memoirs that mean the world to me, including pictures of my grandmother, my spiritual mothers, my mother, my aunts, my sisters, my artwork and my crystals. They are a gentle but profound reminder that I am who I need to be and where I need to be. Falling in love with myself will guide me to do what I was made to do in this lifetime. 

Enjoy previous #WRITESIS entries as we transition into the year's grand finale!

#011 Amerie, 2019

 She walks with roses in her eyes

And honey on her lips

And so she is blind

And even the bitter

Tastes sweet.

written by Amerie, IG POST, 2019.

#010 Jhene Aiko Efuru Chilombo, 2017

For my sisters thinking about that new dream job, that new workout plan, or those beautiful set of chocolate brown eyes: here is a poem for you! 

Check out previous entries to meet sisters writing vibrant poetry throughout America!

#009 Marilyn Nelson, 1989

Armed Men

Ray teaches at the Boley Baptist School,

a little too far away

to travel safely there and back

by buggy every day.

Some years she lets the children stay

on the farm with their doting father,

but this year they're toeing the line at school,

although keeping them here is a bother.

She has to watch them all the time:

Boley's a Negro town,

and sometimes carloads of white men

drive through, looking around.

Today, for instance, as she'd held

silk yard-goods to her cheek

and smiled at the extravagance,

she'd heard the screen-door creak,

and a young, fair-haired white man

had stalked in. His dismissing eyes

had registered over Mr. Oliver's store:

first contemptuous, then surprised.

Mr. Oliver said, Good morning, Sir,

one moment please. Miss Ray, 

you look Easter-fine this morning.

Can I cut that silk today?

The white man spat a bad name;

Mr. Oliver prepared to fight.

The white man promised to bring some friends

and shoot up the town tonight.

And now, Ray's children expect her

to let them go out and run

through the twilit streets of Boley,

where each window holds a loaded gun. 

written by Marilyn Nelson, The Homeplace, 1989.

#008 Marilyn Nelson, 1989

The Fortunate Spill

Note: Traditionally, black-eyed peas are served on New Year's Eve: each black-eyed pea one eats brings good luck. 

   Well! Johnnie thinks. He has his nerve!

Crashing this party! What a stuck-up conceit!

Passing his induction papers around;

another Negro whose feet never touch the ground.

His name is Melvin Nelson. In his eyes

the black of dreams sparkles with laughing stars.

Johnnie agrees to play. And it defies

all explanation: she forgets five bars!

This cocky, handsome boy? she asks her heart.

For good luck all year, Melvin says, you've got to fart.

They eat elbow to elbow, in a crowd

of 1942's gifted black youth.

His tipsy bass-clef voice is much too loud.

Hers trebles nervously: to tell the truth;

she's impressed.

I'll be a man up in the sky,

he confides. She blurts out, Hello Jesus! And they die

with laughter.

But the joke catches him off-guard:

he spills the black-eyed peas into her lap.

Oh Lord, he mumbles, be she laughs so hard

both recognize the luck of their mishap.

And I watch from this distant balcony 

as they fall for each other, and for me. 

written by Marilyn Nelson, The Homeplace, 1989. 

#007 Marilyn Nelson, 1989

I've spent the week immersed in the delicious poetry of professor emeritus, author, and 1991 National Book Award finalist, Marilyn Nelson (also published under Marilyn Nelson Waniek). I began my journey into Nelson's herstory with "The Homplace", her 54-page poetry book published by Louisiana State University Press in 1989. In just a day I consumed her unique and illustrative writing style that allows readers to savor the bittersweet story of being an Afro-American.

Currently digesting tapas of her work: Faster than Light, The Fields of Praise, and How I Discovered Poetry.

#WRITESIS