Elder Malidoma passed in the early hours this morning. He was a key influence in my life at one time, my teacher of ritual and divination, almost a father figure. His name meant, "to make friends with the stranger/enemy."
So many were touched by the glint and spool of his medicine. He spoke to our longing. He poured spirit into arid places—bringing the elegance and lucidity and sophisticated wordplay of the otherworld, weaving these into the medicine of transformation. Malidoma knew how to speak to the inner ear of the heart. He knew how to whip up the spirit. He knew the old ways to the ancestors. He built new templates. He saw in you what you were not willing yet to see. He saw a community's gift of seeing and remembering. He roused us into the initiation of our ancient selves. He was a match-lighter and catalyst. Silver of tongue, magic and promise. Promises cannot always be kept. But look how many he kept. Failure is part of the risk. Yet look how he succeeded. Look what he completed. There will be none other like Malidoma. Undoubtedly he will be welcomed with open arms and fanfare to the land of the ancestors. To all whose life he touched, may we express our grief passionately. "Grief is in fact owed to the dead as the only ingredient that can help complete the death process." And, may we give gratitude for the gift of his life.
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I have a poem up today as part of Dusie Collective's Tuesday Poem series. My thanks to Rob McLennan for the invitation.
A recording of my poem "Ordinary Annals" for the reading series hosted by periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. (You can read the poem in my chapbook Ordinary Annals. I am donating three copies of my poetry chapbook from above/ground press, Ordinary Annals, to the Asian American Women Artists Association's first online auction, as part of their end-of-year fundraising campaign (November 5-15). With a limited print run and personal inscriptions by me, these are collectibles. If you would like to bid on this gift set, you can register here. Ordinary Annals is one of forty artworks and art experiences featured—in case you are looking for gift ideas for the holiday season—and of course this is a wonderful way to support AAPI women in the arts.
Whether your bid contributes $50 or $500, your bid will go a long way in supporting AAPI women artists and art professionals lead the narratives of their own stories and legacies. Register and start bidding now.
I am on Episode 223 of Jazz Ready, reading my poem "Homing Instinct." Thank you to poet and playwright Magdalena Gómez for having me, and for the love and warmth with which she made this episode.
Talk: Remantling Serpent Energies for Healing Possibilities for the Body, Intimacy, and Futurities10/1/2021
Listen below to my talk presented at the "Women’s Ancestral Wisdom, Witches, and Spiritual Connections to Nature" panel during the Women Rising! New Visions for a Post-Patriarchal World Conference (San Francisco, CA, October 12-14, 2018).
Remantling Serpent Energies for the Healing of Post-Patriarchal Possibilities for the Body, Intimacy, and Futurities
Abstract: Many feminist and women’s spirituality scholars have been asking how we may make ourselves more available to an imagination that orients us better to becoming post-patriarchal subjects of post-patriarchal moments. Centuries of living within societies of domination has left our bodies, nervous systems, wills, and histories with accumulated trauma which, we have found, acts as a limitation upon—or wars upon—the arc of the possible. This trauma must not only be discharged to make us more available to ourselves, our promise, and each other: it must be transformed in a way that the energy released contributes to the liberation of all life. Engaging primarily the traces of serpent reverence found in South Asian religious, folk, and nondominant traditions, my paper suggests that the medicine of snakes holds keys for our safer embodied being, relationships, and resilience. Being in this moving condition of safety orients us to ways of relating that center instead of othering, include instead of excluding, vision and become instead of fearing. I argue that a partnership with ancient serpent energies can assist with individual, collective, and intergenerational healing. I will be examining oracular traditions as well as findings and claims from complexity theory, neurobiology, and epigenetics to propose a multi-pronged framework of remantling serpent energies to work with us. Which snake practices found in tradition may be reclaimed in keeping with an ethic of care and reciprocity, and which of them need to be decolonized? I explore how to call on and reconnect with serpent energies in a way that rebuilds our ancient solidarity with the Earth, as well as bridges across the borders of coloniality and modernity/rationality. My thanks to the marvelous Lantern Review for including Ordinary Annals in their September Asian American Poetry Companion, among some beautiful poetry picks—and, for scoping so well the textual ligaments connecting these poems.
I will be reading new and selected poems at Poetry With Prakriti: The Online Edition.
Saturday, September 18, 2021 @ 7pm IST. Register here. I have a new poem up on The Fabulist today. Read it here.
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