Reparations Moon

New Moon November 2019

Reparations Moon

Breathing space

to invite

an accounting

of how blank, bare & bleak

a life lived

only for oneself

becomes

No light at night

makes for clear mourning:

all the loss

made spacious & glittering,

at rest in stars

& dark music

Gone Moon of Reparations:

may it birth

radical renunciation

of unearned, unasked-for

overmuchness

in favor of the tartness

& surprising pleasure

of repairing

Winter Moon of Amends:

rivers freeze over

inviting us to walk

in other lives for a spell,

to seek the good

that is good for all—

not the plundered alone,

but hallow medicine

for recipients of the ill-got

also

Beginning Moon

is

smaller than parts

greater than inequality

New moon ceremonies—

start with land acknowledgment

sing-praise the elements

invoke upright ancestors

(in both directions)

dispel fear

into a circle

of love

of actual bodies

New Moon Both/And Culture

delicious/pleasureful

imagines out—

ambiguity, evolution

…

open-ended-ness

roots down

New Moon Fruition

& intention/aspiration:

honoring transit

sowing nurturance seeds

voicing alternatives

imagining futures

Hidden Brilliance:

privilege reckoned

entirely whole

privilege repaired

privilege a universal right

to be new

under a moon

of each one’s

free

choosing

so all may sing

& dance

together

sans fear

of loss or safety

May we work

in each of our ways

to make it so—

E MA HO!

text by Qayyum Johnson

painting by Suiko McCall. Move and You Are Trapped, 2019. Ink on paper mounted on panel, 12×12″.