Beauty. Vulnerability. Regality.

Reality. You add 53206 to the mix and cracks in sidewalks become an abyss; abysmal gaps so wide the tender flowers and fertile soil erode away. School playgrounds sow seeds into weeds of prison pipelines, that regal Black boy’s reading level and lifeline, cut short.

Garden shears, shearing louder than a bomb on deaf ears, like the tendrils of Eric Garner’s fears when he gasped “I can’t breathe.”

Gardens untended fail to thrive.

Beauty. Society cultivates mass incarceration, propagates racism and plants Black and Brown bodies til headstones outnumber the beautiful blossoms we cut short to place on top of them.

Black bone and blood meal are no legacy for the fruits of labor of the most vulnerable.

Vulnerability. Why are the funerals fit for kings, but lives lived ring of fear of the prince dying a pauper, robbed of nurturing?

This garden’s grown and been tilled since the murder of Emmett Till…

In Ferguson, forgotten son. Some other mother’s son prone, black lifeless limbs sown in blacktop, in seething afternoon sun, down in Ferguson.

Regality. A Dark Star’s light can be trapped by its own gravity. Black Son Shine.

Urban genocide, systemic pesticide sprayed like tear gas on seedlings. We Round-Up black bodies, cicadas emerging in fabled rebirth, carcasses turned back into trampled earth.

Some plants are drought-tolerant.

Transman budding, petals unfurling. Tamia’s beautiful eyes still shine in Treint’s selfies, like a self-watering garden blossoming into a black man. 

Repudiate the weeds, the spate of hate played like Spades in society.

Plant domestic tranquility, nurture vulnerability.

Pollinate peace.

Reap justice.

Bloom Black Boys.

-Dana Alexander Kaleta  6/30/20

BLACK LIVES MATTER: Bliss.Beauty.Regality.

BLISSFUL IGNORANCE REALITY

BEAUTY TURNED UGLY WHITE FRAGILITY

REGALITY DEPOSED BY COLLECTIVE SENILITY OF PAST ATROCITIES

JUSTICE RIGHTS HELD IN CONTEMPT BY SOME EXEMPT FROM HUMAN DECENCY

COMPOUND INTEREST ON MORAL BANKRUPTCY POLITICAL PROPHECY

BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACKS LIFELESS inJUSTICE STAND UP DON’T SHOOT

HANDS UP SHOOT SHOT DEAD DUPED DEMOCKRACY A MOCKERY OF

INEQUITY MISOGYNY DISPARITY DOMESTIC inTRANQUILITY REVELS IN

INJUSTICE JUST THIS INCESSANT PROCLIVITY FOR HERESY ON PAR WITH

A POTUS’ MORAL DEPRAVITY APATHY EQUALITY A RARITY SPARE ME THE

RHETORIC THE PATHETIC SYSTEMIC RACIAL PANDEMIC DAMMIT

JUST SAY THEIR NAMES! IT’S INSANE THE BANE OF MORALITY

ABSENT OF MEANINGFUL CHANGE IN SOCIETY

WE THE PEOPLE SERIOUSLY CONDEMN THE BRUTALITY YET REALITY

WHO THE PEOPLE? HOW TO ERASE THE FACE OF RACISM AND DIVISION ON

THE STREETS WHERE THIS BROKEN TRACK PLAYS

STOP DON’T SHOOT BANG AND REPEAT? EXCISE HATE! EXORCISE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY UNSHACKLE CIVIL LIBERTIES DELIVER US TO CIVILITY PROPOGATE EQUALITY PERPETUATE IMMUNITY TO INJUSTICE JUST THIS ONCE STAND UP FOR LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL… THAT’S ALL

A CALL TO ACTION… SEEK TRACTION IN RADICAL ACQUISITION OF PEACE

SPEAK YOUR PEACE PROTAGONISTS IN THIS ISH WISH FOR A PATH TO

LESS VIOLENCE RESISTANCE CHANGE DEMANDS PERSISTENCE

WE CAN’T RESIST THIS MOMENT - 402 YEARS, 8 MINUTES AND 46 SECONDS IN THE MAKING - STOP TAKING LIVES ALL RISE LEVERAGE PRIVILEGE TO

SUPPORT UPRISING PONTIFICATE YOUR POSITION STOP POLITICIZING PATRONIZING AND PERPETUATING LIES UPLIFT SHIFT BRIDGE RIFTS

BAN POLITICAL GRIFTERS HOLD SPACE FOR UPRISE REVOLUTION OF

BLACK AND BROWN VOICES AND FACES IN RIGHTFUL RECLAMATION OF

SACRED LIBERTIES AND SPACES… LET’S FACE IT: TO BE ANTI-RACIST

NO SPACE FOR COMPLACENCE IF I’M COMPLICIT TWIST IT FLIP THE RESISTANCE PERSISTENCE IN AN OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANT DISORDER OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

TEARING DOWN WALLS ON BORDERS DISRUPTING THE ARCHAIC CORRIDORS THAT FUNNEL LIKE SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINES LIKE MINDS LIKE

BLACK LIVES MATTER LESS CRANIAL SPLATTER ON STREETS

MORE RISE-RESIST-REPEAT UNTIL CHOKEHOLDS ON ALL LIVES ARE BROKEN

NOT JUST SOME TOKEN REFORM BUT WE PERFORM THE WORK

THE DISMANTLING REDUCE THE INEQUITIES AND THE PRIVILEGED PRATTLINGS OF OPPRESSORS. DO BETTER!

DECOLONIZE CLASSROOMS

MAKE ROOM FOR BLISSFUL EXISTENCE

BEAUTY PERSISTS

REGALITY EXISTS AND…

DEMOCRACY IS STILL A PARTICIPATORY ACTION!

D.A.K. (January 2021)

I try to identify words that describe my personal experience of Covid and social unrest; ones which  resonate with my vacillation between pandemic empathy and apathy. One day I’m sitting in front of  the television, completely rapt, balling at the personal narratives flowing from the screen into our  small television room. A good cry is liberating. I keep it in too long and then it devolves into total emotional wreckage. It’s okay when it happens in front of the television, in response to a visceral image that should evoke a similarly uncensored reaction. It’s a bit more problematic when it happens in the shower. In the morning. Normally 27 minutes before I need to harness emotions, put mascara on, and swap out pajamas for real clothes (at least from the waist up), to log into a Zoom meeting. 

At some point I need to retreat to my privilege… embrace my apathy. 

I similarly vacillate in my collection of words to describe my teaching and writing... and racism. Blubbering. I blubber, shudder actually, with tears days or weeks after the news first enters my cognitive space. Then it’s still in the “other” space. The “This can’t be happening” space or “It’s 

not real” place or “It isn’t happening to me” space. Denial? I’m not sure. But when the switch flips, shit gets real. My baby sister has breast cancer. My middle sister has Young Onset Parkinsons. Mom has colon cancer. Trish died this morning. Just collapsed and died. Still no definitive cause of death. Did I mention that was 2 years ago this month? I still check my phone contacts and she’s still there. I haven’t had the guts to call. Then another call comes in: a call to action and, yet, this call is on hold for what feels like an eternity… or for, minimally, 8 minutes and 46 seconds of brutality in the name of security, domestic tranquility, a bleak reality that pranks the call for JUSTICE FOR ALL... 

I’ve cried a lot during this pandemic. Which pandemic? The COVID one or the racism one?The empath in me absorbs others’ misery and suffering like a sponge. When it turns passive aggressive or justice is systematically dismantled, racism systemically upheld, and I straddle the line between white woman wokeness and performative allyship, it’s time to jump ship, take a knee, and sit this one out…

Dana Alexander Kaleta

Dana is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant and the Director of Quest Project, a UW-System pre college program within the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee TRIO & Precollege Programs. She relishes in the tongue-in-cheek old skool methodology, but as a vehicle for dispelling assumptions and prejudice and to draw attention to the need for progressive pedagogy and innovative means to engage youth in relevant cross-cultural educational experiences. Her writing is inspired by travel, time spent communing with nature, and her adventures living as a part-time expat in Medellin, Colombia and Costa Rica. She currently has countless writing projects “in progress” and has perfected her procrastination prowess over the course of the Covid pandemic.

Process:

I love word play and vernacular. I get riled up when I observe injustice. Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the ensuing social unrest and ongoing Covid pandemic converged in the perfect storm, forcing me to observe my own biases and acknowledge my personal privilege. Our Black and Brown precollege students and families are disproportionately impacted by the Covid and systemic racism pandemics which have shaken our community. As a white educator, I had work to do. What was my personal role and responsibility in dismantling the oppressive systems at work? Representation matters. Beauty.Vulnerability.Regality., my spoken piece, was a response to a writing prompt by Nakeysha in UWM Writing Project’s Summer Institute featuring Von Canon’s Black Boys Bloom, Too series. Von’s vivid work hit me like a visceral gut punch. Nakeysha’s creative ekphrasis approach to Von’s compelling digital collage series spoke to me as a timely means to engage participants in exploring intersections of identity and experience. A partnership among Quest Project, GENRE: Urban Arts, and Von Canon was born!