Anastacia-Renee will be reading in Cascadia Magazine’s Seattle Writers + Artists event at 6:30 pm Tues. December 10 at Vermillion in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. More details here.
Snow Globe
your smell a
fragrance hanging (a round)
in every happenstance
a memory lurking
underground
like hip-hop
or a hobbled fence
of protection
i
don’t
smell you
i
don’t
smell you
your history
a copy out
of print or
laying ( a round)
a burning building
all the pages
in black
& white
.
.
.
Chefs Table (For Two)
he says nothing will go to waste not even a small bone, this is being a butcher i want to be a 5-knifed butcher (to myself) & spare no thing too small cut around the fat & capture the quiet suck of my own marrow
who can know the joy i might slice just so i can multiply (it)
he holds a pigs snout like it is god/gold
as if the snout is the answer to
every foul smell i want to be a sweet smelling thing golden statue of unforgivable lard
fattening up an open trough
.
.
Before Being a Mother-Artist was so cool
1.
as it was (back then)
i was the only poet
popping safety pins
shut & breast shields in
her satchel trying to
smother the smell of
milky newborn &
poverty & my puns
perched so tight
around the audience
that the white university
begged to feed us
& they were so high
on our black us-ness
on us blackness
on us sweat
on us travel swag
on us youth
on us anger
that i was able
to take so much
money home i
could buy groceries
& that
was how i made a
dollar out of 15 cents
but—i did not party
like a rockstar
nor let my hair down
nor get low low low
too many backs to
burp & temperatures
to take
what I wouldn’t give
(back then)
to have
heard another black
mama say she had
to get back to her babies
what I wouldn’t give
(back then) to see
another mouth
on a tittie at a
midnight cipher
once at a reading i had to go across the street to a 7 eleven gas station to pee
while i held my baby in my left hand and wiped my ass with the other
so when you infer or even think for a moment i am weak or incapable
i want to ask you if you could? If you could pee & hold the future in your hands
then spit a poem so fire not even the devil could survive it
All illustrations by Carol Rashawnna Williams.
Publication of these poems and art was made possible by a generous grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.
Anastacia-Renee is a multi-genre writer, educator, TEDx Speaker and interdisciplinary artist. She is the recipient of the 2018 James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award for Washington artists (Artist Trust), and has served as the Seattle Civic Poet from 2017-2019, and the 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is the 2019-2020 Jack Straw Curator and has received writing fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Whitely, Mineral School and Hypatia in the Woods. She lives in Seattle, where she teaches poetry and multi-genre workshops at Hugo House in libraries and universities and her work has been published widely.
Carol Rashawnna Williams is a Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist who makes work that engages audiences in conversations about social, environmental and racial justice. While in residence at Seattle University, Williams created two dynamic art installations that included prints, paintings and sculptures made of primarily recycled or reused materials. Carol has received a 4Culture Conductive Garboil Award (2018), an Artist Residency AADK Spain (2018), a 4Culture Artist Community Grant Award (2017) and was accepted to Seattle Office of Arts & Culture’s Public Art Boot Camp (2018). She is the owner of K-Love 4 Art, co-founder of both Race & Climate Justice Art Collective and ARTifACTS, and the Co-Executive Director at Community Arts Create.
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