GRACE /ɡreɪs/ [verb]
formations without power; body as lineation; to fail as a poet in times of collapse.
FAILURE /ˈfeɪljə/ [adjective]
to press our thumbs into the abyss; promises that wear quicker than a swaddle cloth
as in: failure turns red on our skin, rashes callous when we surrender.
1. our chests were protest signs. we carried them to the riots & the greengrocer; undressed the blouse off our placards for the doctor & pressed bedsheets into our slogans at night.
2. organising is a mourning song.
spreadsheets > strangers > strategy > new names spoken softly
>> dreaming of the reeds with pharmacist on speed dial >>
in this rendition we gasp in morning songs >> drumming on our knees
>> we don’t need >>> bad governing >>>> we don’t need bad governing >>>>
organising is the threat of a good example.
every sack of rice a meal plan – rice husk for insulation – rice bag for pillow case – my friends escaped to rice fields with their sisters of enslavement – carrying their duty to live on one hip. i can’t boil this poem in water, dash salt on it & live. reader, i’m saying choose rice over poetics.
3. a note on talking:
hail the group chat! call-out mission for relief! don’t call it aid! don’t call it humanitarian! wash your words & deliver blankets! point of contact! shadow banned! consulate streets throb with every Black mother & child. mobilise! whatshername got wasta at GS! self-defence autonomy! autonomy self-defence! i’m sorry operations are unsustainable. economy of care garbled in jargon.
see, the language of love was militarised.
4. parked the getaway-car like a goat, balanced high on Lebanon’s mountain-side. recovered passports of the songs we sang, the borderless songs we sang, under a falling sky. by late afternoon we found night under our fingernails & held each other in damp apartment blocks.
5. good money travels in brown paper bags here. i watched street lights press through the windscreen, resting in a strip across my comrade’s face. she’s holding cake. seventeen sisters from Sierra Leone got their cramped two-room house burnt down. another Arab anti-Black attack. in a two-room dwelling, eighteen women tend to one another & watch TV. we brought cake because against terror is the best use of luxury. sharing plates of whipped cream & strawberries. there’s always a mother to mother the women she just met, waiting with all her blankets, braiding hair.
6. “power over” | “ground up” | “alternative economy” | “shoulder to shoulder” | “collectivity” | “the network” | “revolution”
all that to say: i re-filled your Tupperware box with rice & meat, let me bring it over.
7. please notice when your soul dreams in rice seeds. beyond the fault-lines of our collective body the not yet stirs within us. it is the not yet that we follow in order to arrive. fingernails muddied with night, mouths full of sky.
lisa minerva luxx
lisa minerva luxx is an award-winning poet, playwright, activist, and essayist of British-Syrian heritage. In 2021, luxx released Fetch Your Mother’s Heart. She has written three verse plays including Eating the Copper Apple, what the dog said to the harvest, From Dusk til Dawn, and The Moon is Listening. Alongside luxx’s Channel 4 short filmLesbian., her other works have featured on BBC Radio 4, TEDx, and ITV. luxx founded Nehna Hon, an anti-racist collective in Beirut who setup free daycare, job support, rent, and food assistance plus urgent action for victims of the kafala system.
