Harmony HOLIDAY
HERE IS A SOUTHERN
GOTHIC TALE
THAT’S
TRUE
HERE IS A SOUTHERN
GOTHIC TALE
THAT’S
TRUE
An excerpt from
a book called MAAFA
Order a copy direct
from the publisher
here ...
Maybe it is time to devour one another
this grandiose sharing
could be the new
commerce
The brainwave patterns of 40 subjects were officially coded with spoken words and silent thoughts
A violent indoctrination we placated to learn to read
What a boring patience the one for freedom
Here is Jimmy Baldwin in his apron greasing a pan some landline intervenes an endlessly
ringing earth revelations ( I been ‘buked and
The other side of heartbreak is not ambition
crimson gauze wrapped in god’s suicide
Some genocide is god’s suicide adjacent and remote a gory form of favoritism
Shot 44 times in the head they announce readily
I will not dream only of security and safety
& he’s never planning to be a minister in this version just gestures of church and grease
so duress so wreckage so woodshed bound in skeletal minstrel so rope around the
season skit when Maafa catch up with season of the witch
we made the calamity famous endless
because it is not (yet) sublimated rage
His craven childhood a rubric for the silly hope we all hide in our skin buckets of
candy & the sweetness never expires but its sucre fades to the faint funk of daylight in
a B movie
The bad deed of having fake anatomy links cabaret to a brightly lit machine
And it occurs to me these ruins are the blighted heave of an undone trance and we
might even love them & ourselves
Again
a mass of habit-tensed muscle unfolding into the archive of vengeance
a delicate jest inside of which sharing became my coherence
We are atonal here and combed out god’s dialog so glad
In disaster’s sigh byebye Tomorrow dies of longing and we go right on walking
Self-hypnotizing
No one ever told you how much you can heal in one day
Is it too solicitous?
Is it to make such beautiful sounds or affect infected with such beautiful sounds
Is it the herd instinct that makes words go round worlds drowned like poison
I heard most people don’t experience catastrophic violence
Pity them watch Fletcher Henderson do a time step He’s so lightskinned
Has a Hitler mustache speck of babble in the stillness of him feet pattering like a police baton
Not that it’s bad to vaguely resemble your very own enemies
All of life is predicated on a certain degree of possession
Not that the ruins are in exile from themselves for resembling their enemies’ fantasies
A litany a plan
Or a floating tendon useful for early mystical initiation a slur or tie
Rich Homie Qwan or Buddy Guy even Richie Havens Where does an improvisation begin and fizzle
Like some relations or no relation at all
George Clinton is crying in my arms
how an altruistic caution has a hinge on him and he’ll never get to be maudlin again
Lonnie Holley’s howling began then
Moralizing captivity that viral riffing he calls high lonesomeness
bipolar jonesing what if I rip your heart out and turn it into a supermarket
The ruins mention that we were here the demolition mentions our omission
The crackle of fragments Miles whispering in my ear by the pool
Monk spinning his muteness into rule visible tyranny of good sounding
Duke Ellington chartering the mission of poise in his vocal tone accusing himself
Of everything play that again look how she ate that He collapses
Harmony HOLIDAY—born in Waterloo, Iowa—is a poet and choreographer. The daughter of Northern Soul singer/songwriter Jimmy HOLIDAY, her father died when she was five, and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles. HOLIDAY earned a BA in rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA at Columbia University. She is the author of NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL (2011), winner of the Fence Books Motherwell Prize; a “dos-a-dos” book featuring poetry, letters, and essays, GO FIND YOUR FATHER / A FAMOUS BLUES (Ricochet Editions, 2013); and HOLLYWOOD FOREVER (Fence Books, 2017), which she is turning into an afroballet. HOLIDAY is currently working on a biography of Abbey Lincoln.