by Sagirah Shahid
“NAFSI! NAFSI!”
Sagirah Shahid / Sept 2020 / Issue 1
In remembrance of George Floyd
Minneapolis,
I am learning there is no intercession
from flames or any ash bound cinder celebrating the mural before the man,
a rain-soaked teddy bear wilts into a barrage of dying
chrysanthemums, azaleas, sunflower sprouts flung into sawed down
milk cartons & water bottles, cardboard poems & unlit candlesthese the names of beings still within the reach of my melanated hands.
We were cornered by this city’s hatred for usas if the default pandemic weren’t already inflaming our Blackness,
in Minnesota white people stare too hard, expect you to graciously gifteach tear shucking down your face as they record
and peacock-tail their solidarities and sympathies and I sincerely hope you remember his nameremember our names
and these parks our siblings lived in,
tent cities police bulldozed
while woke white folks built condos
and Hell’s Angels revved up their bikes
in the backdrop, white Salvation Army men
with their khaki shorts and center parts, hand us
guitar slung words of scripted freedom,
biblical burgers.
No one wanted
to ask us why, our chosen names
kept trying to outlive specters spectators.
Sagirah Shahid is an African American Muslim poet and arts educator from Minneapolis, MN. She is a recipient of a mentor series award in poetry from the Loft Literary Center, a Minnesota Center for Book Arts mentorship award, and Twin Cities Media Alliance’s Our Space is Spoken For, a collaborative public art and performance fellowship for Black, Indigenous and artists of color. In 2019 she was a writer-in-residence for Wisdom Ways, Unrestricted Interest, and 826 MSP. Sagirah’s poetry and prose are published in Mizna, Winter Tangerine, The Drinking Gourd, Puerto Del Sol, the American Muslim Futures virtual exhibit, and A Moment of Silence an online anthology of 50+ Black Minnesotan voices during a historical moment of transformation. Sagirah’s debut collection of poetry “Surveillance of Joy” is forthcoming from Half Mystic Press in 2021.
M. Florine Démosthène was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Florine earned a BFA from Parsons School of Design (New York) and MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has exhibited extensively in group and solo exhibitions in the USA, Caribbean, UK, Europe and Africa. She is the recipient of a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Arts Moves Africa Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She has participated in residencies in the USA, UK, Slovakia, Ghana, and Tanzania. Her work can be seen at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Lowe Museum of Art, PFF Collection of African American Art, and in various private collections worldwide.