A TIME
MY BLOOD
REMEMBERS

BY AVERY TEMPLE

opening prayer (wake from the daymare)

i spoke to the water today                              though i ghosted her last winter

sang my prayers to Palestine                            while we weep, scream, act, repeat

sent my ancestors to Sudan, to Congo                    i missed their hands immediately

said i am safe, now protect my siblings                 while i cannot unhear the door knocks,

i learned of liberation as i listened –                 i had nearly forgotten that they were made of  

cottonwood trees                                        a flashlight shining in between

they told me of a time my blood remembers          sifted through screen doors

that this body has yet to experience                    on the flesh, it’s bound to be

a red tailed hawk flying above                          all skyscrapers coming down now

and as easy as air, she showed me                       begging, screaming, carving into me

                                              
                               which direction to get free.

who invited douglas?

drop in

but not as in ignore

as in awake

painful

sharp foreboding

electric lime green against deep emerald

cedar | firs | douglas

what tf is a douglas?

if you owned the world

how could you do a disservice 

and make it so fucking boring?

under arrest by the police inside

oceans slip beneath

the skin

sacred things

keeping me alive

compiling messages to send to ex-friends

when courage fills up 

disco balls purchased at nearly 28 years old

chosen family christmas with matching stockings

mischief done at midnight 

meeting so many new hearts to love

warm showers that feel like the womb

pole dancing in the dining room

sheets that smell like a lingering lover

every season stuffed with birthdays

recreating the calendar to remember time

snowball fights and sledding,

feign it for training

cop cars collapsed in branches

during the snowstorm 

a fuckton of free spray paint

unemployed, late morning warmth 

writing on the bed

even though it hurts my chest

Natalie Diaz in the morning

Assata Shakur at night 

mentors we look at eye to eye

big plans, big actions,

big dreams for spring 

children with rocks in their fist

adults with arms cocked

to take out fascists

mushroom nightlights that keep

the bad thoughts away

dried cempasúchil on my window sill

to guide their way

there’s no energy left to party
(i’m just fucking to stay alive)

getting railed while a bomb hits Gaza

making tea when the hospitals are ablaze

eat me out like the world is going down with you

only revolution can yield the earth’s cries of pain

creature comfort

there are the physical shields of the apocalypse,
then there are the emotional ones.
plywood, for instance,

could never bring me back into 

this god forsaken bruised body
like the way his face pushed

against my knuckles in the morning can.
i’m not naive, 

i know he’s too small to block the tear gas 

coming into my nostrils.
but when the streets are calling me,

equally so do you, 

back to the world without words,

the cozy of a room we share

where evening blends to daylight.

i always love to tumble along the asphalt

but only long enough to remember 

there’s someone else

i take care of in the mornings

spell

casting

in a poem, it’s not considered a terrorist act to say

that your America won’t live long enough to have another president

in a spell, nobody believes it when you tell them 

that they’re cursed until after they see the results, welts upon their neck

bet.

let me deliver the news,

this place will consider us violent until they’re force fed mirrors refracted into their eyes, 

for some, it’s all peace and love, kumbaya and such, 

but not you. you hold a vengeance close, a warm blanket in the fierce desert night,

nurse your wound,

but don’t suture it closed. keep it bleeding. leave a trail behind for others to find.

el mundo es cruel because we allow it to be

in between:

tiny toy men watch us traverse

between these two realms –

they’ve forgotten their own essence,

don’t recall their purpose.

through the camouflage, i see souls

in plain sight, gruesome, tired, waiting on a paycheck,

turn around and see me, clothed in tear stained cheeks,

i allow it, i reverse back into the crowd of hands, 

beg to take my place

to your right:

two open, parallel wounds

splitting worlds that are essentially the same

but someone forgot how to pronounce their original names –

in between the spine of this beast

is a river, an ocean, a place

where the rain washes away

the pain of those gunned down for

declarations made by someone not

important enough to remember.

on your left:

there is a market

with colorful, ceramic gravestones concealed

as cartoon rip offs from childhood.

thousands of the cutest kids you’ve ever seen,

who nearly break the glass, offer to scrub your sins away for pesos, as though soap could wash off the stench of blood caked into your DNA.

there is desert in their eyes

as they remind us that all cactuses claim bodies who stop their fight.

the mountainside is camo, funeral pyres in disguise

we are ants

it’s not when the dam breaks that we gain clarity / but when the water rises around us / the only ladder we have is on the shoulder of each other

convince our brothers to betray the father figure / the one that marches

us, gorilla gripping shoulders, / towards an early death wholly unworthy

of our dreams / we are capable of bigger things / of smaller,
grander ways of living / that this world has not yet been graced

with the presence of / a life for everyone where fear is weeded out /
let us make room in the soil / for our forgotten dignity

WAR CRY

I AM NOT OBEDIENT I AM A FULL FIELD OF VISION I AM ROTTING THE MOST APATHETIC PARTS OF MYSELF I AM BEING CLEANSED BY FIRE AND TRIAL I HAVE BEGUN TO UNRAVEL AND IN THE PLACE OF WHAT WAS MY MUMMY BODY I HAVE GROWN OUT OF THAT SHELL I HAVE DRAGGED MYSELF FORWARD I AM AWAKE THANKS TO THE SOUNDS OF BUILDING BARRICADES I AM SINGING TO THE VOID AND THROUGH MY VOICE I HAVE BUILT GALAXIES WHERE CHILDREN WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT WAR WAS I AM FORGETTING WHAT OBEDIENCE RESPECTABILITY SHAME PUNISHMENT INCARCERATION EVEN MEANS I HAVE STARTED TO DREAM OF FIST FULLS OF LOAMY EARTH THAT MELT BETWEEN THE FINGER TIPS OF MY LOVER WHO NEVER HAS TO WORRY IF I WILL BE IN PRISON ONE DAY FOR SAYING WHAT I BELIEVE FOR DOING WHAT I KNOW TO BE TRUE I HAVE STARTED TO DREAM OF A WORLD BEYOND  SINGLE USE A WORLD WITH A FIXTURE FOR ALL THINGS AND FOR EACH OF US ONE THAT KNOWS NOTHING OF DISPOSABILITY I HEAR MY KIDS ASKING ME QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO LIVE IN A TIME THEY COULD ONLY IMAGINE I TELL THEM WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO FIGHT FOR A FREEDOM WE ONLY DREAMED OF A WORLD WE HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE WHERE WE SAW EACH OTHERS BEAUTY AS INHERENTLY AS WE NOTICE THE SUN ON OUR SKIN I PAINT A PICTURE OF THE DAY WHERE THE LAST BOMB WAS DIFFUSED I SHOW THEM ARTICLES WRITTEN 

ABOUT THE FINAL BORDER WALL BROKEN DOWN TURNED TO DUST HOW GOOD HOW FUCKING INCREDIBLE IT WAS TO PUT A ROOF OVER EVERY ONE OF OUR NEIGHBOR’S HEADS I TRY TO RECALL THE LAST TIME I HAD TO CHECK IN WITH A BOSS OR PAY FOR GROCERIES IT WAS SO LONG AGO NOW I LAUGH WHEN I TELL THEM WHAT IT MEANT WHEN ALL POLITICIANS SWUNG HOW IT WAS A MIRACLE AS THE POLICE BECAME OBSOLETE IN FRONT OF ME HOW I REMEMBER THE EXACT INSTANCE  I LOST EVERYTHING THAT MADE ME HARBOR FEAR AND IN THAT MOMENT I FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT IT MEANT TO BE FREE