{"id":2213,"date":"2020-08-08T18:42:34","date_gmt":"2020-08-08T18:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/?p=2213"},"modified":"2025-08-05T19:07:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:07:40","slug":"imagini-remanente","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/imagini-remanente\/","title":{"rendered":"Afterimages"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Afterimages<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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by Audre Lorde<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I
\nHowever the image enters
\nits force remains within
\nmy eyes
\nrockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve
\nwild for life, relentless and acquisitive
\nlearning to survive
\nwhere there is no food
\nmy eyes are always hungry
\nand remembering
\nhowever the image enters
\nits force remains.
\nA white woman stands bereft and empty
\na black boy hacked into a murderous lesson
\nrecalled in me forever
\nlike a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep
\netched into my visions
\nfood for dragonfish that learn
\nto live upon whatever they must eat
\nfused images beneath my pain.<\/p>

II
\nThe Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson
\nA Mississippi summer televised.
\nTrapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain
\na white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat
\nher fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney
\nnow awash
\ntearless and no longer young, she holds
\na tattered baby's blanket in her arms.
\nIn a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain
\na microphone
\nthrust up against her flat bewildered words
\n\u201cwe jest come from the bank yestiddy<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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borrowing money to pay the income tax
\n now everything's gone. I never knew
\n it could be so hard.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud
\ncaked around the edges
\nher pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation
\nunanswered
\nshe shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201chard, but not this hard.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her
\nhanging upon her coat like mirrors
\nuntil a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside
\nsnarling \u201cShe ain't got nothing more to say!\u201d
\nand that lie hangs in his mouth
\nlike a shred of rotting meat.<\/p>

III
\nI inherited Jackson, Mississippi.
\nFor my majority it gave me Emmett Till
\nhis 15 years puffed out like bruises
\non plump boy-cheeks
\nhis only Mississippi summer
\nwhistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie
\nas a white girl passed him in the street
\nand he was baptized my son forever
\nin the midnight waters of the Pearl.
\n
\nHis broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year
\nwhen I walked through a northern summer
\nmy eyes averted
\nfrom each corner's photographies
\nnewspapers protest posters magazines
\nPolice Story, Confidential, True
\nthe avid insistence of detail
\npretending insight or information
\nthe length of gash across the dead boy's loins
\nhis grieving mother's lamentation
\nthe severed lips, how many burns
\nhis gouged out eyes
\nsewed shut upon the screaming covers
\nlouder than life
\nall over
\nthe veiled warning, the secret relish
\nof a black child's mutilated body
\nfingered by street-corner eyes
\nbruise upon livid bruise
\nand wherever I looked that summer
\nI learned to be at home with children's blood
\nwith savored violence
\nwith pictures of black broken flesh
\nused, crumpled, and discarded
\nlying amid the sidewalk refuse
\nlike a raped woman's face.
\n
\nA black boy from Chicago
\nwhistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi
\ntesting what he'd been taught was a manly thing to do
\nhis teachers
\nripped his eyes out his sex his tongue
\nand flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone
\nin the name of white womanhood
\nthey took their aroused honor
\nback to Jackson
\nand celebrated in a whorehouse
\nthe double ritual of white manhood
\nconfirmed.
<\/p>

IV
\n \u201cIf earth and air and water do not judge them who are
\n we to refuse a crust of bread?\u201d
\n
\nEmmett Till rides the crest of the Pearl, whistling
\n24 years his ghost lay like the shade of a raped woman
\nand a white girl has grown older in costly honor
\n(what did she pay to never know its price?)
\nnow the Pearl River speaks its muddy judgment
\nand I can withhold my pity and my bread.
\n
\n \u201cHard, but not this hard.\u201d
\nHer face is flat with resignation and despair
\nwith ancient and familiar sorrows
\na woman surveying her crumpled future
\nas the white girl besmirched by Emmett's whistle
\nnever allowed her own tongue
\nwithout power or conclusion
\nunvoiced
\nshe stands adrift in the ruins of her honor
\nand a man with an executioner's face
\npulls her away.
\n
\nWithin my eyes
\nthe flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain
\na woman wrings her hands
\nbeneath the weight of agonies remembered
\nI wade through summer ghosts
\nbetrayed by vision
\nhers and my own
\nbecoming dragonfish to survive
\nthe horrors we are living
\nwith tortured lungs
\nadapting to breathe blood.
\n
\nA woman measures her life's damage
\nmy eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock
\ntied to the ghost of a black boy
\nwhistling
\ncrying and frightened
\nher tow-headed children cluster
\nlike little mirrors of despair
\ntheir father's hands upon them
\nand soundlessly
\na woman begins to weep.
<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u2190 VOICE OF RESISTANCE: POETRY AND THEATRE FOR ROMA RESISTANCE DAY<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I
\nIndiferent cum p\u0103trunde imaginea
\nfor\u021ba sa persist\u0103-n interior
\nochii mei
\ncaverne st\u00e2ncoase \u00een care pe\u0219ti-dragon evolueaz\u0103
\nahtia\u021bi de via\u021b\u0103, intransigen\u021bi \u0219i receptivi
\n\u00eenv\u0103\u021b\u00e2nd s\u0103 supravie\u021buiasc\u0103
\nacolo unde nu exist\u0103 hran\u0103
\nochii mei sunt mereu fl\u0103m\u00e2nzi
\n\u0219i evocatoriindiferent cum p\u0103trunde imaginea
\nfor\u021ba sa persist\u0103.
\n[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocea-rezistentei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2213"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4501,"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions\/4501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giuvlipen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}