planting the dream

What shall we build on the ashes of a nightmare?

—Robin D. G. Kelley

I won’t propose much more since the design and realization of such a space ought to be the product of a collective imagination shaped and reshaped by the very process of turning rubble and memory into the seeds of a new society.

—Robin D. G. Kelley

I see
I see our shadow in the trees
Watching the wheel unfold
I see our one shadow on the wall
I see your restless hand in the spider’s thread
I am the ice cave and there is water,
deep blue and white, a light at the bottom
I am equal to my love for you
Let down your hair, willow
in the moonlight: the river
lulls us into the dream. Nightmares
jostle branches in our eyes. I long
for the world that is before you,
the plate you set on the slate
of tomorrow. Your fingers flutter
to feel for the grass

between the valley,
where one foot follows the other
into the flaming creek.

We don’t know what name to give
the throbbing stone
perched atop the hill.

From here, I see for you
Look at what I lost
when you were lost
and I could only hear
the call of the stones

A body, returned
floats down the river
dressed in candles

I send you the secret
while you are asleep

The nights you carried in a length of a strand of hair —
The unforgiving flash of his teeth —
I stroke your cheek to unlock your jaw
and release the rose you carry in your mouth

Your tongue is raw
and your mouth
is filling with blood

Dear
Dear,

Forgive us for having fallen so far
from where you planted the seed:

At the bottom of the sea, waiting
for the body to ride the stream
back to where the rubble
gave birth to the first
dream

The egg cracks, night
wanders seaward
barefoot in her evening slip

And by this sadness you are shown
the path to the holding sea, a trail
burned by a herd of somnambulant turtles
who folded, one by one, in their grief
until a single remained
to carry the breath of time
back
to the seed.

(Excerpted from Jackie Wang’s “Carceral Capitalism”)