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The

All these songs about fucking cafes

and people, and feelings, and everything they never said.

Well what if there’s nothing to say?

Just crawling

      and diving

            and spilling

                  and writhing

                        and laughing

                              and crying,

just do what you do best, you pile of worms!!

Sink in your wilderness, “ing” without verbs

in the brain,

  of the mind,

     from the head,

     could be You,

  but it isn’t.

There’s nothing.

Just bubbles   of static and silence.

Just row, row your boat and koo koo kachoo

And document holidays I spend with you.

Flip the pages, the parties, the little exchanges,

The moments alone when you think you’re the stranger

The flowers and colors, encounters and pieces

   that you left behind

           in  the future?

                 the past?

   There’s no inbetween.

Just the singular humming of one big machine.

These are the thoughts we like to think that we share

   with ourselves at least...

hoping to find us somewhere,

amidst nothing but static and silence.

 

Every time I think there’s an end to this poem,

it reminds it’s never over - it never really begun.

I float and I fly in a soup full of stew

and a brain full of minds

that I found in a HomeGoods on Route 52,

You know, you should really go!

They have Just What I Need

when I don’t know shit about shit about shit about shit

about shit about shit         about shit about shit about shit

   about shit

about shit   about shit about shit about shit

about shit and about shit.

I try to write normal.

I try to be good.

I try to use words that make sense in

an order, a shape, a bee, a bell…

Ugh, I did it again!

There she goes, on and off again, just like words

In and out and up and down and here and there and right and wrong and

What does it matter, the order of words???

All that falls out is a charming duality that’s never reality.

Come back, just to finish the thought that you started!

Well, I can’t.

Because the one who returns is never the one who parted.

      You know, nothing is nothing.

      It’s not vast, or small

      It’s no torn melancholy intention

          or adorned with a oneness

      It’s no thought or concept at all.

      and it’s certainly not

New Orleans, LA

The city of New Orleans and surrounding areas is the traditional territory of the Chahta Yakni (Choctaw), Houma, Chitimacha, Acolapissa, Biloxi, and other Indigenous peoples who have stewarded this land since time immemorial. These lands were home to numerous nations before the arrival of Europeans, who used enslaved African peoples to build New Orleans upon their soil. The largest slave markets in the Deep South were in New Orleans, and many local institutions were built by the labor of enslaved peoples and their descendants, who suffered the horrors of transatlantic trafficking, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and other harms and injustices. These harms and injustices endure in the form of economic gaps and other inequities that Black communities experience today.

Before the city of New Orleans or the state of Louisiana, this land was known in Choctaw as Bulbancha, “the place of other tongues.” It was a place for diverse cultures to come together, for hunting, trading, and sacred rituals. The culture of New Orleans was significantly influenced by the Indigenous heritage of Bulbancha, and the Indigenous peoples of this area continue to leave their mark on the city and community. Governmental, academic, and cultural institutions were founded and are perpetuated on the exclusion and erasure of Indigenous Peoples. Colonialism has sustained oppression, genocide, land dispossession, and involuntary removals of Indigenous Peoples from this place. This statement is a tribute to the original peoples of this land and the sacrifice of those whose labor built this city. Acknowledgment alone is not enough, and Ahribelle pledges to incorporate this commitment into restorative action.

adapted from the NASP 2024 Convention land & labor acknowledgement

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