The Brooklyn Rail

(“This is not a piece of paper, but my art extending across all the damn miles between us to hold you and hug you with all the strength, we have had to gain from the pain. This is my hand reaching inside you to feel the hole that is there.”
—Excerpt of a letter from Pat Parker to Audre Lorde, September 1988)

Tonight I think of my poet friends who are gone
Brilliant black lesbians whose words still speak to me
I call their names out loud to no one in particular and to everyone
Monica Hand, Venus Thrash, Kamilah Aisha Moon

I remember how much I loved the sound of each of their distinct voices
I still hear Venus performing her sexy ass poems in her deep baritone voice
Every woman in the room had a crush on her, including me
V, I miss you, your sensual swag, your poems that reached deep into my heart

Monica Hand, poet, friend, and mentor wrote in my circle of poet-friends for years
I loved her DiVida poems that she shared with us during National Poetry Month
They were eventually all published posthumously soon after she died
That felt so right and yet so wrong, simultaneously

Kamilah Aisha Moon’s poems lifted up her family
and often mourned the loss of her beloved Mama
I felt her poems were in conversation with me; Aisha was speaking directly to me
My youngest son learned how to write personna poems from her very first collection

Today, after what felt like weeks of cold, damp, endless dreary days
the sun came out in New York and it was 70 degrees outside
It was as if the Universe was saying to me,
“Muthafuka it is spring now, why are you mourning the lost voices of your friends today?” 

It is spring and the sun was shining on me today
I could hear their chorus of voices, sexy, brilliant, inquisitive and sometimes funny as hell
As if to say to me, “J, it is ok to love the feel of warm sun on your skin and smile”