back to the future: esch edition (by juanita)

By:

In 2017 the men and women pull crowns out of afros. I see Angela Davis reading a speech from her iPhone. I see Jimi Hendrix mixing songs on Garage Band. The most beautiful people all balance crowns of black on their heads. I see girls that do not exist outside of the grip of the city–skin like chestnut, mahogany, obsidian, brown sugar. All dressed up in flesh and bone. Brooklyn unfurls like the wet tongue of a sweating dog, flops out pink and long like China’s, sunlight licking at the streets, coating bodies in a thin, glossy sheen. This is Afropunk Festival, where the people face the sun. Where people look up at the night sky, see themselves, and smile. No one is afraid of the rays eating away at their light, spitting out arms and faces darker, darker still. Like I am. Like the darkness I see on me.  

There are parties on the main stages disguised as concerts. Legs bend, stomp; hips wind around corners as far as a mile down the block. People sing and people listen. The noise fills up the venue like a soda can, shakes the grounds until the sound fizzes and bursts. The noice reminds me of Katrina knocking hard on the door of the Pit, drenching us in her grasp, flooding my world with her watery voice. For a moment, the crowd becomes a sea, drowning all the microphones, knocking down tents. I stretch my hands up, looking for the sun to hold on to. I have to search in the water for my feet. 

“You like Solange?” 

The voice is like my hand bringing me out of the house, grabbing for Skeetah, Junior, Randall, safety. The voice is the soles of my feet connecting with sodden, solid grass. 

“I saw you waving your hands a second ago. I love her music.” A long, flowing skirt lies cinched to her waist. Embroidered into her top is the word goddess in scrawling, slanting letters. 

I can't help but wonder if she knows goddesses like I do. If she feels their spirits moving within her, like a child in the womb. The people here don't care too much for mythology. They make their own goddesses out of women trapped behind cellphone screens, spin myths to explain the lives of people they will never know. 

But I see Medea, Io, Athena in her. I see goddess and understand. I look at her hair, black ringlets floating close at her neck, a deep, deep brown, and I see myself in her. I look at the stage and see a piece of me in the singer. We are three sides of the same dirty copper coin. 

“Yeah, I was. That's Solange? I love her, too.”