Voices & Soul
“… I think of a little girl feeling Joy from the sting of an icy winter blowing across the crowded hilly streets and the lonely flatlands to the Bay of this Suffering Life… “
- JP
Commentary by Black Kos Editor,
Justice Putnam
I think often of Landscape. I think of the Landscape observed from a 60th floor penthouse suite overlooking Central Park, and I think of the Landscape observed from the upstairs window of a childhood home along the Berkeley/Oakland border. It is said all life is suffering, but it is an "exceptional" kind of Suffering found peculiarly within the borders of an expanding American exaltation that would claim a suite on the 60th floor of a Central Park-view suite is the life of agony and an excuse for grievance. Because I think of a little girl feeling Joy from the sting of an icy winter blowing across the crowded hilly streets and the lonely flatlands to the Bay of this Suffering Life. I think of the small and great slights she learned and how she navigated the systemic racism and misogyny that apparently does not exist. Ask any racist and misogynist, they’ll tell you, It did not defeat her or bend her to the false idol of capitulation. She simply remains joyful.
And they hate her for it, but it is the reason we love her. We are allowed to be joyful, we are allowed to call the weird for what it is. And we don’t have to take their pearl-clutching criticisms and let it paralyze us. No matter how they couch them.
How will we get used to joy
if we won't hold onto it?
Not even extinction stops me; when
I've sufficient craving, I follow the buffalo,
their hair hanging below their stomachs like
fringes on Tiffany lampshades; they can be turned on
so can I by a stampede, footsteps whose sound
is my heart souped up, doctored, ninety pounds
running off a semi's invincible engine. Buffalo
heaven is Niagara Falls. There their spirit
gushes. There they still stampede and power
the generators that operate the Tiffany lamps
that let us see in some of the dark. Snow
inundates the city bearing their name; buffalo
spirit chips later melt to feed the underground,
the politically dredlocked tendrils of roots. And this
has no place in reality, is trivial juxtaposed with
the faces of addicts, their eyes practically as sunken
as extinction, gray ripples like hurdlers' track lanes
under them, pupils like just more needle sites.
And their arms: flesh trying for a moon apprenticeship,
a celestial antibody. Every time I use it
the umbrella is turned inside out,
metal veins, totally hardened arteries and survival
without anything flowing within, nothing saying
life came from the sea, from anywhere but coincidence
or God's ulcer, revealed. Yet also, inside out
the umbrella tries to be a bouquet, or at least
the rugged wrapping for one that must endure much,
without dispensing coherent parcels of scent,
before the refuge of vase in a room already accustomed
to withering mind and retreating skin. But the smell
of the flowers lifts the corners of the mouth as if
the man at the center of this remorse has lifted her
in a waltz. This is as true as sickness. The Jehovah's
Witness will come to my door any minute with tracts, an
inflexible agenda and I won't let him in because
I'm painting a rosy picture with only blue and
yellow (sadness and cowardice).
I'm something of an alchemist. Extinct.
He would tell me time is running out.
I would correct him: time ran out; that's why
history repeats itself, why we can't advance.
What joy will come has to be here right now: Cheer
to wash the dirt away, Twenty Mule Team Borax and
Arm & Hammer to magnify Cheer's power, lemon-scented
bleach and ammonia to trick the nose, improved--changed--
Tide, almost all-purpose starch that cures any limpness
except impotence. Celebrate that there's Mastercard
to rule us, bring us to our knees, the protocol we follow
in the presence of the head of our state of ruin, the
official with us all the time, not inaccessible in
palaces or White Houses or Kremlins. Besides every
ritual is stylized, has patterns and repetitions
suitable for adaptation to dance. Here come toe shoes,
brushstrokes, oxymorons. Joy
is at our tongue tips: let the great thirsts and hungers
of the world be the marvelous thirsts, glorious hungers.
Let heartbreak be alternative to coffeebreak, five
midmorning minutes devoted to emotion.
- Thylias Moss
"The Rapture Of Dry Ice Burning Off Skin As The Moment Of The Soul's Apotheosis"
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News round up by the Black Kos Editorial Staff
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Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t need much of an introduction. She is one of the most toxic members of an already extreme House Republican caucus. She is so extreme the House Freedom Caucus kicked her out! The last two years haven’t changed her at all. She has a real challenger this cycle in Shawn Harris.
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After 40 years of military service, Shawn retired as an Army Brigadier General. He and his wife Karla have five children and four grandchildren. They live in Rockmart, Georgia, where together they run their first-generation grass-fed cattle farm, and Karla works as a family doctor. Shawn grew up in Blakely, Georgia, on his family’s farm. After high school, Shawn enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, rising to the rank of Sergeant. Later he got his B.A. in Agribusiness at Tuskegee University. After 9/11, Shawn was deployed as an infantry commander in Afghanistan, where he saw extensive combat. Shawn later served as a senior military advisor in posts around the world. Now he’s taking on MTG.
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Fulton County DA Fani Willis (D) has responded to ongoing appellate efforts to disqualify her from prosecuting Donald Trump and RICO case co-defendants by rejecting complaints about “race card” remarks she made at a historically Black church in Atlanta, Georgia, ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, comments defending former lover Nathan Wade from criticism months before he resigned as special prosecutor from the case due to an “appearance of impropriety.”
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Though the world can’t wait to see what’s next for Simone Biles, the U.S. gymnast is living in the moment — and wishes everyone would too. After becoming the most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history at the 2024 Paris Games, Biles expressed her gratitude for her tribe of supporters, which includes stars like Snoop Dogg and her toddler niece, who sported a mini-version of Team USA’s leotards in honor of her aunt.
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Candidate for President Madame VP
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