The triptych “world-maker, self-shaper, word-mother” is a series of pieces I created in dialogue with narratives around healing, agency, self-determination, and personal power. These pieces are about all the ways we have the power to shape ourselves, the worlds we make with one another, and give life to one another with how we name each other and interact with each other.
The poem, “cardinal’s dream”, is a poem about hope and the power of change. The poem is a dreamscape with the symbols crossing over from the triptych. When reading the poem, watch for these symbols: the cardinal, the eclipsed sun, and the child. The poem is at core, about change and all the expressions of it map to the ways it’s expressed in the collages.
cardinal’s dream
when power finds you anyway
I hope when I’m done
there will be
only birdsong
The ground warped to water;
with rosebushes still standing,
thorns fire-stained and blood-soaked.
Anywhere you looked,
the cardinals would laugh in flames.
Scattered feathers
turning cityscapes to ashes;
change was a mystery
they wrote our names in.
In the evening,
we sent the shards of our child-selves
out to find our lost;
To pluck them
from rose bushes
& skulls,
from ruins
& our new memorials
We sent them with so many bandages,
Enough songs to fill a century,
& the last bits of honey we could find;
& by morning, they were all used,
on ghosts, or felled birds,
on the cracked earth
or the concrete crumbling.
We had to remind them how to laugh,
& they always remembered.
After the world we knew washed away,
there was birdsong
& there was laughter
& hopefully tomorrow
a black sun will meet us,
unannounced & unwanted
& in that thunder,
we will discover
we always knew how to love
–
This piece is a part of SCRIBEONHIGH: a cultural strategy lab. You can learn more about it at: www.scribeonhigh.org.