In midnight voice, at the crossroads of art and family, she raises ancients out of dust. Her mother, chants blood music as she circles ruins.
Slashing, sinewed phrases invoke freedom fighters, their strength found in shotgun houses next to picking fields.
She voices defiance of shrill taunts on blistering sidewalks.
In plantation fields, bloodroot and mimosa sway to her sounds.
A woman calls the sky to hold these words.
In a midnight voice, arms extended, she reads blues that lay the soul to dust.
Hands reaching upwards, a white woman moves her fingers calling the sky to hold these words.
The poet stands at the crossroads where her art and family past meet. Her mother stands in the ruins holding a bouquet of bloody music and a spear she carved from her lover’s bones.
Slashing, sinewy phrases celebrate the first activists. Her mother fought for freedom with the strength that simmered in shotgun houses next to the picking fields.
A freight train of rapid fire explosive words, intellect the weapon, now unconcealed, she quashes the howling and leers from blue veined faces in tobacco stained t-shirts.
Bloodroot and mimosa sway to the sound of her voice.
“My mother was a freedom fighter” (Aja Monet at the Women’s March)
She read like a blues veteran. Dressed in a midnight suit, arms extended, palms out, displaying the bedraggled truth of racism toward women.
She gave us her mother, standing in the ruins, holding a “bouquet of bloody music in her hand,” after she had carved a spear out of her lover’s bones.
A white woman in the audience, hands extended upwards, moved her fingers, called the sky to hold these words.
Aja's slashing, sinewy phrases testified to the strength of the first activists, she could have been standing off a pack of bullies, who didn’t understand the poetry, but couldn’t deny the force of the words.
Her mother fought with the strength that came from shotgun houses next to the picking fields, grace earned through knowledge and the mission at hand. She was a freight train of rapid fire explosive words, testimony unheard with this force and vast audience before; a woman speaking what has been ignored, distorted, about the every day battles fought by her family.
Defiant, she attacks with lessons for racists, the earth spins upside down, awakening.
Her mother, though she had fast friends together in a consensus of one mind, one action, was, at her center, lonely, yearning. Her daughter summons her often for advice, when the turns of street and field converge.
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