HEY THERE

Courtesy of Courtney Hanson

by Sherie Jarvis

Thanks for the strength and the courage you have shown.

People blow in the wind forgetting that with help change is growing.

People like me broken but still manage to keep the love flowing…

It was once #metoo, I am #transgender and #black lives matter even in this prison 

where the way I look keeps bad chatter.

I’ve fallen but if they’ll remove their foot off my neck I can get up and breathe.

Scattered scars, bruised heart, memories that don’t leave.

Childhood in a wild hood just now learning to read.

Understand my struggle before calling me a bad seed.

HEY THERE no one was there why didn’t they take the time to love me.

God is near, but why didn’t they physically hug me.

When the masks come off and the smoke has cleared,

when all lives matter and no one is weird just maybe I’ll make it home to say 

HEY THERE.

Special thanks to the The Fire Inside for sharing this poem and poet, published in The Fire Inside, Issue Number 61, Summer 2020 

The Fire Inside is a Newsletter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners

4400 Market St., Oakland, Ca. 94608 

JOURNEY TO AFROFUTURISM

• 

Painting, Journey to Afrofuturism by American prisoner artist C-Note

On a journey
long, long, ago
Afrofuturism was long-sought
The maps of its existence
were misleading
like the maps to Wakanda
but She
a student at an HBC
found the truth
Afrofuturism
would not be found in Africa
but California
Like the Raiders to the Lost Ark
who sought God’s covenant
so too
Spanish Conquistadors
sought the Califia
The Queen
of the land
of Black women
She ruled with a Saber-tooth scepter
adorned gloves
from the Mammoth’s wool
She nursed
the Earth’s oldest and tallest trees
in the forests
of Redwoods
Invited the Blue whale
Earth’s largest mammal
to suckle her young
off Her coastal waters
In ancient times
Her Queendom fed the world
In modern times
It’s called
America’s
richest
farming region
But She
a student
from HBC
just like me
Prayed
to the Queen Mother
at a place
known as
Nob Hill
in San Francesco de Assisi
is enshrined
a mural
in a hotel
for one-percenters
The Califia spake
to our dear sister
in a way
only understood
by feminine energy
and so she wrote
as only a scholar can
the map
to Afrofuturism
It did not lead to Wakanda
in Africa
or the East
Where the Sun rises
but in the West
Where the Sun sets
in America
will Afrofuturism nurse itself
In the Queendom
of the Califia
California

Poet’s Note: For the uninitiated, California’s name derived from a Black woman
Copyright 2020 Donald “C-Note” Hooker