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News and updates from around the Ujima Ecosystem.

April Showers Edition: Love in the Time of Capital, by Jard Lerebours

In April's Ujima WIRE, poet and documentarian Jard Lerebours speaks to lovers and family while stuck in the belly of the beast and from within the cogs of the machine.


 

I love you 

So I will give you what is left of me 

After working this 12 hour shift 

–nothing left but tip-out, aching muscles and disdain 


I love you 

So allow me to give you what is left of me 

After serving the Black bourgeoisie 

Saltfish, plantains, and oxtail 

From home, like Two Mommy would cook 


I love you 

So let me lavish you with this sewing machine 

Make us clothes to wear in a future where I don’t have to put on 

This poorly ironed white button down and these masculine jeans 


I love you 

Will you make space for the red to spill out of my mouth – 

The beginnings of a class consciousness, 

Red gashes strewn across my ghastly fingers 

Calluses forming on poet hands 


When we escape this nightmare 

I will be pretty, wearing my mother’s red satin shirt 

And your bleached hair will shine under the Atlanta sun 


I loved you

But how will the underclass

Hold one another and survive

Among these ruins of empire


I kiss you soft

All is not lost yet.


 



Jard Lerebours (He/They) is a Jamaican-Haitian anti-disciplinary storyteller from Long Island, NY. They approach art-making as a conversation between friends and family in communion. He deeply cares about this communal approach by way of a West Indian upbringing in a loving village of cousins, aunts, uncles, great uncles, grandparents and great grandparents. The goal of their work is to capture the nuance, joy and responsibility that comes with living, breathing, Black being.




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