Since the last time I did a post on this blog, the U.S. has leapt into the flames of fascism and kleptocracy willingly, it appears. In the second month of 2025 we are witnessing a surge of policies and enactments in real time affecting not only the U.S. but Canada and other countries.

And the world’s corporations are capitulating to insulting U.S. hegemonic commands” such as changing geopolitical markers like the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to Gulf of America”.
There is so much more to be said about the ideological war waged on those racialized as non-white, the poor and working classes, rural swathes of the country abandoned to eonomic and climate disasters, and the moral panic created by the trope of “migrants”, “illegals”, ‘foreigners’ —that is ringing out through official and institutional channels. The removal of Black, Women’s, Indigenous, and Pride months on Google calendars in the U.S. signal that people of colour, women , and queer people are excluded from citizenship and nation-bulding.

Meanwhile the murderous situation in Gaza is obscured by the language of resorts and real estate when the real issue is probably the amount of oil and gas reserves found there, to be controlled by the U.S. and Israel in the near future. Proposing to build luxury homes on these blood-stained lands in front of our very eyes gives us a sense what life must have been like for indigenous peoples in the Americas and in settler African countries such as South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Further, denying the right of return for Palestinians makes this second Nakba an unimaginable dispossession of millions.

Today’s post shares the work of a number of Black/African Artists in honour of African Liberation Month and as a gesture againt erasure. As in Gaza, where memory is destabilized and erased through physical bombing; on the internet, and in classrooms, workplaces, and libraries, our lives are at risk of being erased. So share with me in celebrating the work and passion of a number of Black artists who certainly derserve a wider audience!

Emmett Till by Aime Cesaire, Martinique

your eyes were a sea conch in which the heady battle
of your fifteen year old blood sparkled.
Even young they never had any age,
or rather more than all the skyscrapers
five centuries of torturers
of witch burners weighed on them,
five centuries of cheap gin of big cigars
of fat bellies filled with slices of rancid bibles
a five century mouth bitter with dowager sins,
they were five centuries old EMMETT TILL,
five centuries is the ageless age of Cain’s stake.
            EMMETT TILL I say:
                 in the heart zero,
                 of blood not a drop,
and as for yours may it hide my Sun, may it mix with my bread:
—“Hey Chicago Boy
is it still true that you’re worth
as much as a white man?”
Spring, he believed in you. Even at the edge of night,
at the edge of the MISSISSIPPI rolling its bars, its barriers,
its tomb-like avalanches between the high banks of racial hatred.
In spring rushing its murmurs into the portholes of eyes.
In spring hound-calling the bovine panic in the savannas of the blood.
In spring slipping the gloves from its fine hands in a burst of shells and
   siliquae,
loosener of fear clots, dissolver of the clots of hatred
swollen with age and in the flow of blood streams carrying
the hazardous rubric of stalked beasts.
                 But They
they were invulnerable, sluggish as they were,
and mounted, massively, on bizarre immemorial billygoats
            —“CHICAGO BOY” . . .
All gone with the bleating of the racial wind
He listens in the blue bush of veins
to the steady singing of the blood bird,
he anticipates above the banks of sleep
Sun, the rise of your furtive step,
a vehement fish, in the astonishing blue field.
Then night remembered its arm
a vampire’s flabby flight suddenly hovering
and BIG MILLAM’S Colt 45
wrote the verdict and the state of the Union in rust letters on the living black
    wall:
20 years of zinc
15 years of copper
15 years of oil
            and the 180th year of these states
            but in the heart unfeeling clockwork
            what, nothing, zero
            of blood not a drop
            in the white heart’s tough antiseptic meat?

NICOLAS GUILLEN, CUBA, FROM THE GREAT ZOO AND OTHER POEMS

El hambre – 
Esta es el hambre. Un animal
todo colmillo y ojo.
Nadie lo engaña ni distrae.
No se harta en una mesa.
No se contenta
con un almuerzo o una cena.
Anuncia siempre sangre.
Ruge como león, aprieta como boa,
piensa como persona.

El ejemplar que aquí se ofrece
fue cazado en la India (suburbios de Bombay),
pero existe en estado más o menos salvaje
en otras muchas partes.
No acercarse.

Hunger
 
This is hunger. An animal
all fangs and eyes.
It cannot be distracted or deceived.
It is not satisfied with one meal.
It is not content with a lunch or dinner.
Always threatens blood.
Roars like a lion, squeezes like a boa,
thinks like a person.

The specimen before you
Was captured in India (outskirts of Bombay),
but it exists in a more or less savage state
in many others places.

Please stand back.
 

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL, AUDRE LORDE, U.S

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
 
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
 
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
 
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

THIS IS NOT A SMALL VOICE, SONIA SANCHEZ, U.S.

This is not a small voice
you hear     this is a large
voice coming out of these cities.
This is the voice of LaTanya.
Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
is the voice of Antoine.
Darryl. Shaquille.
Running over waters
navigating the hallways
of our schools spilling out
on the corners of our cities and
no epitaphs spill out of their river
mouths.

This is not a small love
you hear       this is a large
love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.
This is a love that crowns the feet
with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the
water sails
mends the children,
folds   them    inside   our    history
where they
toast more than the flesh
where they suck the bones of the
alphabet
and spit out closed vowels.
This is a love colored with iron
and lace.
This is a love initialed Black
Genius.

This is not a small voice
you hear.