Eunice Odio Translated from the Spanish by Keith Ekiss, Sonia P. Ticas, & Mauricio Espinoza
CHORUS
For a long time they awoke without knowing day was upon the world; they thought day was the same as dreaming, they thought to awaken meant to return; that departing was a thing without light, an absence.
They thought morning meant return, a way of being, a return without rest to the entrails of love they couldn't feel.
But one time, being thus, lying about recalling clearness without being, neither lost nor found, what never was contained in secret space nor commemorated in the senses,
suddenly, quieted and ignited, facing each other, bone against bone, throat against throat,
through organic steps through swells of damp and living entrails they entered the primeval roundness.
They gathered their body, their outer joy,
and walking on the foot of dawn they ascended to their lineage
and spoke the word without shadow;
the word within their reach waiting only for them to grasp it,
the word meant for all yet no one had found it:
morning.
And everything fit in her, everything from body and air, color and wheat;
and everything neither of the body or air, but of a third species without sound.
And suddenly they spoke the word knowing themselves the purest:
"This excerpt from Eunice Odio's 'The Fire's Journey,' a 4-Part epic poem about the creation of the world as and through language, finds two spirits, Airo and Aira, about to take on corporeal form and enter the physical universe. In a world that is always in the process of becoming, made new each day, Odio invites us to rediscover the sacred word: morning."
Dobby Gibson and Matthew Rohrer discuss Rohrer's new book, The Sky Contains the Plans, and much, much more. "I heard the poet Sun Yung Shin once say that being a good poet means being a good ancestor. I like thinking about her words in different ways. One way I think about them: As poets especially, our 'scene' isn’t restricted by time or place, or life or death."
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community
Black Table Arts: "We offer professional development for insitutions centered in education and the arts. We work with artists all over the state of Minnesota to collaborate on speaking engagements, performances, writing workshops and panel discussions."
National Bail Fund Network: "The National Bail Fund Network is made up of over sixty community bail and bond funds across the country. We regularly update this listing of community bail funds that are freeing people by paying bail/bond and are also fighting to abolish the money bail system and pretrial detention." Find here a listing of pre-trial bail funds by state.
The American Civil Liberties Union: "The ACLU Racial Justice Program aims to preserve and extend constitutionally guaranteed rights to people who have historically been denied their rights on the basis of race."
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"I thought about the future—and the shores my daughter would stand on—every time we played in water. Play with a young child is always about the objects themselves, but at the same time always seems somehow allegorical. A story unfolds. Ideas about the world are exposed: Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub…."
