On Lorna Simpson’s Source Notes (poem)
Two Black women/mother/artists
enter a building with the dead restless in its belly and search the walls for
some sort of hope and understanding of this abundantly unruly life
After several dead ends
we finally find what we’ve came for:
A note of survival from another Black woman/mother/artist
Her offerings lean from their perch
A mighty sea of blues
Their eyes and fingertips rain down
Like silk bonnets, twist out and braids
We pledge allegiance
to this true place
Where Black women can sit without fear of our pitch perfect laughter
How sharp it sounds against
the white gaze
How it disrupts the white walls
with our loud light
