I once howled at a friend, "how can we ever escape Aunt Jemima and Mammy if we choose to practice an African traditional spiritism, 'cause that's how sisters of faith dressed in the 18th and 19th centuries!"  Pancakes, syrup and broad knowing grin aside, devotion to the unknown, to the ancestral is a complicated thing post-trade--marked, marred, maligned.

Watching North American blacks freak out at the Iyas (mothers of the spirit) on the corners selling acarajé looking like Mammy gave me pause; they didn't know that the head wraps and draped shawls have specific significance, just like the bracelets, earrings and charms. Perhaps we should look to those images as distorted historical records of our African religious practices here in the US...

We have become stranded from the specificities that accumulate overtime to settle in as a practice.

This always growing series of poems are my attempts to experience the ancient mysteries as vital, contemporary energy, that can surge past market schemes and human arrogance. They are memories and lessons that our political machinations have not managed to kill off by labeling it negro ole timey shit.

Genomic Research

As Above

Oya

MissLady Funk at the Bayou

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