Breathwork Meditation for Reparations
After Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Me & the marine mammal who tips & dives
below waves coating solidified ash & coral nurseries
our apprenticeship to emotional messiness, coal-knuckled voices
In mycelium whispers splayed like dandelions in riposte –
Let the triple dolphin insignia smear onto Anguilla's revolution
floating face-down in hundred-hands-deep & Shinnecock dreaming
up the Atlantic's Right Whale twisting into Ashanti’s whale god
dividing into sea cows splayed ashore the Bering Sea in luxe decay
Splintered water runs over & over pulpy flesh strewn on landing docks
into great fields of moonshine, also known as extinction, also
known as midnight sun gaping through the open mouth
of a manta ray sweeping clean stiffening plankton embers –
That burn beneath small-eyed river dolphins narrowed
to fit the Ganges, Amazon and Aotearoa, named for illness,
endured as long as the ocean is a drum emptied of all possibility
cupping soot-streaked dawn studded with beads of nightlock & ochre
Meditate like narwhal, beluga, & bowhead whales stunned
by creaking ice, winter's toppling bookshelves covering the enslaved
drowned acres beneath bones lay beneath swirling fish patch
nudging patchouli-shaped algae scatterings –
Treading water in estuaries carved in wrist veins
grasping at right whales cut & melted into blubber & light,
breathing large & soft more than the world's forests
rotating blacktip reef & tiger sharks wrenching respect
From colonies' claws, rejoice safety in numbers & visibility,
rejoice gills flaring with the broken earth’s exhales, in & out, for all
the thousand mile dolphins strewn pink like streamers of freed prisoners,
children of asylum clambering back into the womb –
borderline & domestic cages drifting on the sea,
birds nestling on sandstone like recliners, while Atlas
floats on his back in the salt-strewn water, safe from the shipwreck
at the edge of the world, Arawak praying in Rendezvous Bay
to ridged-teeth dolphins with heads like clifftops,
asylum myths sparkling like heavy metal ores,
caged bird dies without singing behind bars
may the picket of coral become a bundle of grasping fists –
May the anger of centuries coalesce into a thumb-sized pearl
as bowhead whale's skin & burning blood subcutaneous & visceral
lights up a circle of dolphins tattooed in the dusk, bone marrow & adipose
atop manta rays spreading circular flags, chanting Black diasporic
call & response, mothering groups where thousands sing cross-species,
cross-planet hymns, the birthright of yellowfin tuna & seabirds, citizenship
of synchronized-swimming, two males & two females harangue in the darkness,
echolocating silver clouds divided by dogtags of seaweed & scum –
drifting over copyrighted & intergenerational dolphin schools,
faith in the eclipse of a trembling whale-star crossing a spawning
cod school, black shadow across gray moon, beaming
husbandwifemotherfatherdaughterson across the universe,
luminous-organed fish chomped up by tag-tailed dolphins
in war paint, cry out the invocation as years tumble like divers
scientists circling around a hump thousand of miles across
Summon paradise in the underground communication of trees –
Defy the deceased who do not bother with shallow water
go deep off the continental shelf and with each other
curse the ones who hunt & scry whales out of their minds
into homes which freeze white-beaked mammals from feeding
With suffocating frost heavy & strewn with murders
savoy blue & unsolved, this is for for all the filter-feeders
& time-compressors, mouth grander than ice-sharp teeth
or poison tail, instead let the elders hang out with notorious scars –
& rope burns, somersaulting spinner & beneguela dolphins defiant
at the pack's rear like leaders, covering for the young & bereaved
of light in the deep sea apart from dislocated bone & moss-strewn rib
looking with crystalline-coated eyes & turbid voices
sonic defiance of spears which pierce blubber armor
& bleed through scarlet pooling like oil on the surface of the sea,
rainbow mesh pierced with sharp fangs of leopard seals & orcas,
shred baleen wrinkled with sleep deprivation, one eye open –
for the autumn catch, the other winking & glistening for lost
Black graves, the cold sea iridescent to conceal ringed seals
sharp silver & Black, bells of water lettuce clotting rivers
like arteries, streaking through walrus lands’ dyspeptic stomach
gray & greasy, a full map of galaxies unknown but barely
anonymous, vibrissae feel out buried clams like lost namesakes,
lockets tossed for good luck, messages in bottles half buried
in deep dirt swirls, transmission of ecologies –
chill all to the bone, teeth streaked with bloody marrow
overflowing vengeance since the middle ages on the disappearing narwhal
cut for unicorn horns by conspiracy of liars striking sodden match
to capitalism, fleeting corpses of severed sinew & lonesome sails
billowing, dolphins circling in strange orbits, the slave trade’s virus
amassing cannon shots at military bases, triple bullets tearing through
to the ocean floor to pierce nosy spirits, nesting calls of the dead
named & renamed, sick & sad then sick & even more sad –
Slow time lubricating the plantation infrastructure,
where marine mammals are me & mine, where sediment
always swirls through our chosen family & traditions morph
anew atop crumbling ice cliffs & survival persists in motes of light
where echolocated spirits penetrate deeper than sonar shields
Slow down and listen beneath steamboats’ deadly engine blades
May you be born crashing and screaming into a silent bay
coddling a clutch of oxygenated harbor seals churning hearts –
below a thousand-five-hundred feet, to one-twenty to three
or four heartbeats, each minute, for what do you really hear in this polluted
land, what red tides conceal toxins that take down graceful manatees,
traversing rows of scum-ridged teeth and clean boneless skies,
Like a child choosing two mothers from a teeming mass of hoes
saying, record, listen, breathe, mantra, slogan, speaking in ripples
as the ocean catches all of us by the mouths & refuses to let go,
release me, burning with historical corpses dripping with refractions –
Possessing ribcages and sternums extinguished by
needle-tendriled brittle water nymph & bayonet-looking eelgrass
amphibian detritus & duck fodder, underwater candles smoking
like winter chimneys, fire-rocket reptiles and invertebrates plunging
Fast specter vanishes, surfaces, indistinguishably from bodies,
burst brains, smashed cargo holds with empty bunk beds,
being cradles her against his forearm, and her moss-perfumed torso
is empty-scented underwater, heavier than sunlight & twice as runny –
In a trance-like sleep that blows vapor and chain shrapnel
House of echoes streaming from lungs ripped by boat propellers
Mansion of grandparents’ broken hearts & disabled children,
sifting sand for knife-edged fish scales & seabird excrement
pebbled like antique diamonds planted on rusted rings
& broken promises litter the seabed, still, since the people
rebelled against nature & sent armored tanks into the sea
May the hooked heads of live squids line up in a row for forgiveness
If the marbled island will vanish then grow from out of nowhere-land
and the whales will lie alongside the walruses without drowning in oxygen
then the orca nudge the seal in half-sleep without killing & swallowing
the land eternal yet not forever as the devastated ocean, not yet, still unfreed.
Michelle Chen takes inspiration for her writing from the events that occur in and around her home, New York City, though her birthplace is Singapore and she hopes to return and visit someday. Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, the Asian American Writers Workshop's The Margins, Kinsman Quarterly: Winds of Asia, Deep Wild, LIBRE, and elsewhere. She has been recognized by Ploughshares Emerging Writers, the City College of New York, Brooklyn Public Library, and Penguin Random House, among others. She is an alumni of the Juniper Institute for Young Writers, the Iowa Young Writers' Studio with the support of the National Society of Arts and Letters, Girls in Icy Fjords, the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, Girls Write Now, and the Teaching Artist Project. She is currently a graduate student at NYU while acting and modeling, and enjoys less ice and less sugar in her winter melon milk tea. You can follow her collegiate book blog at https://silkwormreading.blogspot.com.
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