You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
Along the vertex, where two bodies (heavenly
or otherwise)
Intersect, the minor tasks and major
efforts that lend life
A narrative, a geometric center, the appalling
beauty of the abstract,
What Ails Me, Sara Nicholson
here’s a little mouse) and
what does he think about, i
wonder as over this
floor (quietly with
bright eyes) drifts (nobody
can tell because
Nobody knows, or why
jerks Here &, here,
gr(oo)ving the room’s Silence) this like
a littlest
poem a
(with wee ears and see?
tail frisks)
(gonE)
“mouse,”
We are not the same and
i, since here’s a little he
or is
it It
? (or was something we saw in the mirror)?
therefore we’ll kiss; for maybe
what was Disappeared
into ourselves
who (look). ,startled
Here’s a Little Mouse, E. E. Cummings
Lionel Benjamin pote yon mesaj ki fè diferans
All Hail the Jamaican Patty (New Yorker)
Lutz Bacher at Portikus (2013)
you ever look at a thing
you ain’t make, but become
a mother in the looking?
our blood is a thread tied
around my finger, tied
around her finger, that helps
me love. when her knees
swell, when her joints rust,
when her hair thins & flees
making a small continent
of skin on the side of her head,
i am witnessing her in whatever
state her body will allow.
Bismillah to the brain that
put my name next to her name
and said look at this girl your
whole life and know some kind
of peace.
Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot, Angel Nafis
“run the country” (NPR)
Burns Library has one of the many letters Louverture wrote to French powers as he attempted to ease their anxieties attached to the situation in Saint Domingue. Addressed to “Citizen Pascal in Paris”, this letter, dated the 28th of March, 1799, reassures its reader that liberty thrives in Saint Domingue, and that Louverture remains dedicated to the French governing body (find image and translation below). There remains an uncertainty as to whether or not Citizen Pascal was an actual person, or rather a name meant to encompass the people of Paris. Louverture claims that any economic struggles that the people of Saint Domingue are facing do not have to do with infertile soil on the island, but rather can be attributed to European and American reluctance to enter the ports of Saint Domingue which “leave the crops without a market.” This letter specifically shows the political maneuvering Louverture had undertaken towards the end of the Revolution as he attempted to appease the French while simultaneously arguing that the people of Saint Domingue were self-sufficient. There are also hints towards the writing of a constitution, which was penned soon after in 1801.
Alaurea Holder, Burns Library Reading Room Assistant & PhD student in the History Department
The First and Last King of Haiti : The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, Marlene L. Daut
… attempts to find a practical approach to the common ground that Black and poor urban dwellers and environmentalists share have failed. Why? Environmentalists generally have failed to acknowledge or recognize the more immediate problems with which an urban dweller must contend. On the other hand, urban dwellers have failed to see the possibilities for the development of more urban open space (parks, recreation centers, etc.) as a source, not only of beauty, but also of employment, job development, a better environment for the rearing of children, and so forth.
The Black Panther Party, Service to the People Programs, Edited and with an Afterword by David Hilliard
In short, we must see a merger of land conservation and “human conservation”-the interconnection between the preservation of our natural and human resources, recognizing that each have little without the other.
Black Doves, S1E1, “To Love Then”
Sitting deeply in grief,
in deep grief and mourning
morning and night.
The knights nowhere
to be seen. Sight
is a witness, complicit.
From minarets and church pits,
we illicit faith. The eve
of Christ’s birth
almost here. Hear the Earth
as it receives the body’s
soft and exposed tissues, the heart
hard as a rock, the rock no longer
figurative. We lost even
the figures of our children. The outline
of a body, jagged front line,
bulldozed memory. Our eyes open
to the mouth of a weapon.
Someone, somewhere, is playing
the violin in the background
of violence.
Before all of this, we didn’t think
too often of heaven. We wanted to fly
through clouds, not above them.
Gaza I, Sara Abou Rashed
