WBLit Mag 2023: Cotton Edition

On Tuesday, February 28th, the Washington Performing Arts invited several of Words Beats & Life outstanding youth artists to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to witness an incredible multimedia performance that reached out into the crowd using multiple artistic genres:

- The powerful photography of John E. Dowell

- The soaring performances of Denyce Graves, Justin Austin, & Laura Ward

- The moving words of Nikki Giovanni, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Afaa Michael Weaver, Lauren K. Alleyne, Charlotte Blake Alston, Glenis Redmond, Alora Young, and Trapeta Mayson

- The brilliant composition of Damien Geter

For the next hour & a half, our students watched the story of America–our inhumanity, our resilience, & our spirit through expression. Beautifully provocative Imagery turned into heart-wrenching words which then morphed into glorious song–all surrounding these soft, bright, prickly explosions reaching up from the soil.

...at the shows opening, it was announced that the youth poets of WBL will be giving a similar presentation–you are reading the result of that work.

Eight exceptional youth poets came together, both in person and virtually, to process, discuss & create art that not only addresses the unspoken, but in some cases, reconciles our relatively comfortable place in the world today with an American history that too often clouds over what was done to its most vulnerable–yet powerful–people. We visited a local plantation and learned the stories of resilience exhibited by the enslaved. We learned their names. We touched the soil that they did. We became active participants in a struggle that is not yet over, and one that continues in these pages. We invite you to sit with each piece, absorb the visuals and open yourselves to the spirit of the COTTON Retrospective.

Washington Performing Arts’s presentation of this project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Patrick Washington and Chlo’e Edwards

Getting Ready by John E. Dowell

Special thanks to M-NCPPC Montpelier Historic Site in Laurel, MD

Alive

by Chimwekele Okoro

Who truly is free?

Some think themselves to be free, But find a semblance of comfort in the captivity of others. They argue: they do not look like me, speak like me, think like me.

but: Look at me!

Who are we if we aren’t our brother’s keeper? Who are we if we desensitize ourselves from this collective anguish?

Who are we if we aren’t human?

The earth groans from all the blood in its core. The sky shrieks from all the screams ignored. The mountains whisper the atrocities committed in secret.

Nothing is hidden.

The greatest weapon is separation, casting away connection by establishing castes to reinforce discrimination.

If we cannot lay down our arms and open our arms to one another, there is no possibility for unity. If we do not open our eyes to this disguise, this veil cannot be lifted.

We must realize: We are one.

We are either together or separated. We are either free or confined. We are either alive or dead.

CHIMWEKELE OKORO, 16, DUVAL HIGH SCHOOL, MD

Ancestral Sight

by Saniya Pearson

You can see me

But can you hear me?

Can you feel the history that drags my roots?

The life that tugs my branches to wave back at you?

To protect you, watch over you To fill your lungs to breathe in what I see

The very same air once shared by those that longed to taste the freedom

sitting on your tongue

That rested silently so you can speak That painfully crawled so you could walk

The trees, us that were cut so you can stand and walk over the same land I’ve wandered before

Free throws in a game of tug of war I pray to not lose I pray to not lose my mind

My mind, they feed it I eat it, consumed it Consumed, I eat what they tell me to think

To hear

To listen, listen to the media To the reading, no, no! not that kind of read!

whispers seep into hungry ears tormented by Ignorancy’s arms It’s drowned by the wind.

“But little one”, you say, “I’m all around you”

“I live through you”

“So why do you let them take it?”

“Why do you let them tell you to swing your legs, teeter them off the edge of tomorrow?

Unsung cries for a voice now yours

Ringing in your ear but sealing itself beneath your lips

Complaining of a dry throat, jumbled words, and a mouth with a slow leak

So, there you sit with a thirst for change but doing nothing, as cotton clogs your tongue but why? Why do you let it?

Because I still wear chains, I say I still carry baggage full of fluffed up hopes some dragging an inferiority complex, but I guess I got that from you, from them

The cool iron that still chinks, and the loops of metal that still twist that still rust

See, in their eyes, it’s because they want nothing but joy, In their eyes it’s because they want us to be happy, to smile But really in their mind, it’s to disregard your roots, cutting them from their paged grounds shoving down queries of what it was like to wear a crown, to be royalty

Still royalty and take away the pamphlet that proves it Shows it

Our literacy Testimonies

Our destiny destined to be challenged from the beginning To forget the forgotten Cover up

The pretty garden of secrets left to rot

So, when I finally get a chance to see you I don’t see you I can’t feel you I don’t hear your cries because they’re drowned out by lands romanticized so when

They didn’t steal your soul, little one, so why do you sit and let your voice drip from its cries?

Little one don’t you recognize you still have the power

To rewrite the pages, they took To narrate your way out of the pretty garden of secrets

To expose the rotting that lies beneath its cotton fields

Little one, I can see you

I can feel you

I hear you

I listened to your prayers every night

I listened to you

Listen to me

All you have to do is close your eyes

I’m still here,

So don’t be afraid to speak out, To share your truth our truth

These roots

To see my branches wave softly, and wave back”

SANIYA PEARSON, 16, CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, MD

Angels are coming

by Sainey Ceesay

My arthritic branches

Scratch across the sky

I scrape out my share of sunlight

I just swelled over time

Swallowed all the trauma

Until my bark could only burst

Who else could I see myself to be when I come from this kind of soil?

They say branches can touch heaven when roots reach down to hell and look at Me

Ain’t I just reflected energy?

Just acting out who I was born to be?

I wasn’t brought up to be a hugging tree me and my friends only learned how to hang

It was never because I wanted to

I did it in the way a child does what they’re told

Molded my mouth silent like Id been trained to

Carried out an act

Even when I had no control

Feel like my branches will betray me

When ill Be called to answer to a higher power for my role

feel like the Angels are coming

To collect

All my cotton filled cries

I can’t tell you how many times Ive wanted to jump out of my own skin

Turn root to leg and run

Turn myself anything but complacent

I still feel hanging bodies in the phantom of my limbs

And ive tried to shake it

Let the guilt fly somewhere loose into the wind

But it keeps coming back

And my body still remembers

So I keep offering these whispers

Like rotten apologies

And I see you Seeing me

Wondering if I’ve done what Ive done

Your glare spreading my shame like wildfire

And all I can do is stand here

Full of my own grief

Stare straight back

And wallow like I’ve done ever since

SAINEY CEESAY, 20, PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY

Distant

by Precious Foreman

Distant

Precious Foreman

Time and space relate in ways that make me Distant from their own identities I Wonder if they felt the distance from the Point of No Return and the promised lands they would

Never get to see

Hidden in plain sight I wonder if the backstairs, outhouses, basements, attics, The only place some had ever known Was ever called home.

I wonder does the silence seeping through The air of this time machine imitate The dissonance stagnant within the Very atmosphere we still breathe

I wonder does the sun still shine the same Length away are it’s eyes still replaying The horrors that disseminated the day That greatest fears of every mother were put on display

Farther and farther and farther away

The dismay between families shattered Searching for their missing children did it Feel like the final piece of the puzzle Was forever gone or were they puzzled by the very thought?

To be separated from your own name Ripped and torn without remorse like Being stuck in the most dehumanizing trade

I wonder in the future will this house be beautiful Picturesque; only stronger with time Ceremonial, shining, splendid, satisfying

Worth more than the surroundings

And completely silent

Inside the broken shards of hope covered With new floor beds and time

Will anyone feel the sharp grit beneath our feet? Will anyone hear the immemorial weeps?

Does the wind still warn to any who will listen? Ceilings look down upon years that broke through the house?

Could someone’s home ever feel sweet to me? I wonder why I feel so distant

PRECIOUS FOREMAN, 15, PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD

Forced Labor

by Malachi “Malpractice” Byrd

Formal Resignation

The moment an occupation outweighs my boundaries I run. Away. Freedom Sought & Self Emancipated from being anyone else’s capital especially in the place I’m from

Before we worried about the cost of living we were worried about the cost of processions how we would pay for the repast when the grief itself hasn’t even passed.

And this all this anger can’t be mine but all this land has to be

I am as free – As freedom Which means everything about this existence came at a cost

How many blocks can I buy with a bale of cotton?

How come this t-shirt is new but I feel like it’s been worn before

My land got put on the auction block and somebody with cotton in the wrong pocket bought my bloodline and made us work

Brought here against my will gentrified against my will and still have nothing for my child to inherit so when I say I am my ancestors wildest dreams, I mean I quit. I mean no cotton, corporation, or caucasian will control my content or my character

I may not know where my next check will come from but I know that my grandpa knew blue collar work

like the back of his hands, and grandma didn’t have machine to wash the burgundy bruises out of the family’s overalls

She taught when colors bleed in the wash, it’s because the hands that picked it are begging to grasp anything soft

All this anger can’t be mine all this fire I been feeling must be embers from my elders because who else understands why I feel shackles I cannot see

Who else can explain why my little sister – even as a young age never picked flowers out of the ground?

I pray the hands she loves nevers pluck her from your place

Because blood don’t run on benign and good intentions aren’t good enough to sustain a lifeline

All this anger can’t be mine all this fire I been feeling must be embers from my elders because who else understands why I feel shackles I cannot see

Cry me a river that can quench a crisis hydration that can heal and human a rain so heavy the cotton is too heavy to wear

The decision is to not be indebted in spirit The leave the soil more rich than you left it That’s the poem

That I will quit. Anything and everything. Do not ask me what I want to be when I grow up

because I do not dream of labor. I reject the rationale that we need to aspiretowards dead presidents or any type of life they lived that he would rather die without it than to kill for it

But this cotton, these clothes, and this everyday choice to be cloaked in our country’s calamity is why I remember

The right to rebel

The audacity to be outraged and the nagging Nat Turner in these nerves

my presence is perpetual a promise to never be a penny or a percentage a commitment to love without a price

A promise to my descendents that we will never again be picked or

Picture This

by Mi’jan “MC” Credle

Picture this

Standing In a field of green

So surrene

This is scenery you’ve never seen

Solar beams

Sunlight dripping off the leaves

Talk to the trees

They got stories you would not believe

All the mountains full of bark

Reaching down to me

Air quality different

Thank you ever breathed

Check the temp, over 90 degrees

But still white smother the field

Like snow when it freeze

I’m talking Fluffy and all

Pillow soft

Growing out the branch lookin like

Marshmallow ball

so immersed in the visual

almost invisible

To the masquerade

This really a stage

Underneath the base

Is the graves where bodies are laid

Of the enslaved individuals

I take it all in

But then it hit me suddenly

That every acre is an anchor holding down the screams

Plantation lookin like playhouse

Ain’t no games about it

Maybe it’s Maybeline they used

To covergirl so you forget about it

History is beautified, better with lies

So guilt becomes clouded

Made them a fortune

Whips & chains to the slain

While they riding from the horses to Porsches

Of course they try to keep it

the best kept secret known fact black is the influence they needed

MI’JAN CREDLE, 21, BOWIE STATE UNIVERSITY, MD

Someone’s Expense

by Precious Foreman

$300 in 1831 was $10,373.79 today

Imagine beating $10,373.79

Imagine raping $6,915.86

And selling your own child for more Imagine dehumanizing a person to the point where you find their existence

Expressed in a dollar sign

We are expensive

Not in the way any currency can express Changing with inflation rising the like Investments in the theft of our power

Not in the desperation

The Southern states chased and Erased when the thought of your freedom Destroyed their economy into waste

Not even in the price tag your hand abandons Drops back to the shelf

Back to crops

Back to the face of the one who enslaved

In the liquid gold flowing through your veins Becoming the backbone of a superpower surviving decades

Our worth transcends time and space

Through four hundred and four years; across the Atlantic

Magic and joy reside

Inside the skin melanin loves to be in Inside the melody that desires to portray The way your power creates and combines

To build a success so much bigger

Than what you can even fantasize

But misappropriate understates

The embezzlement we’ve faced

No wonder I feel betrayed

Robbed not that trust was a part of the trade

But since the moment we arrived on this land

A monopoly was formed of manipulation

Where brown skin means picking cotton

Or tobacco or iron

Or even up the pieces of a falling industry

Where does it not mean The diaspora equals debt?

How did it switch the narrative to we owe you? Why do we continually find ourselves

Gleaning the very fields we sow?

What in their minds did we take for 10K That cost an entire Life?

The love of money is the root of all evil

Strong and sturdy but Where love ends

And hate rises like a thick cloud of Smoke

The last piece

Of an ancient home

Intoxicating distorted views

That misperceive the pursuit of money

As God, glory, and gold

In the absence of everything taken away

Imprinted in the collar of our multichromatic shirts

Is our value

So maybe that’s why they capitalize

Maybe that could be the reason why They could exploit, dominate, and oppress But still place the ad at $10,373.79

Slave labor is supposedly free But now I hope that you see It is always at someone’s expense

PRECIOUS FOREMAN, 15, PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD

The Land is Not Dead

by Chimwekele Okoro

These floorboards creak because souls are hidden beneath the very depths of the soil. The wind rushes, yet even the mightiest gale cannot erase the stories the poplar has to tell. When humans refuse to speak, The Inanimate are given voices.

This land was not conquered. The people were not wiped out. Do you not know the wind whispers? The walls speak, and the earth quakes when the silence becomes unbearable.

There is no destiny manifested in the subjugation of a people. When a people are dehumanized, we all are dehumanized. In our individuality, we are connected. One cannot do without the other.

This land was not conquered. It was under siege. The grass stood on edge, the trees stayed still, and the wind quietened when they witnessed human beings morph into something less than human.

They were always people. There was never a time in the beatings and lynchings and raping and slandering and humiliation…

Never! Did they become less than human.

This land is not dead. It is speaking through the trees: listen. It is whispering in the wind: pay attention.

CHIMWEKELE OKORO, 16, DUVAL HIGH SCHOOL, MD

Through the Centuries or Cotton Speaks

by Sasa Aakill

18th

I never asked to be anything but alive and growing

Breathing and being like clouds stitched to ground

I never asked to cultivated

Coveted

Converted into cash and clothing

I only wanted to grow

To know the feeling of my family by my side in each moment

I did not ask for fields stretching miles

Horizon to horizon like an ocean of snow, unmelting

I did not ask to be this

Did not ask to live

An accessory to slavery and a detriment to so many

And they say cotton is a fine thing to have

And I say cotton is a cruel thing to be

They built a cotton gin for my body and i can only think it fitting

That I be mangled by the people whose bodies break for mine

And their tormentors are white like me

The irony of it all almost makes me smile

Then it makes me weep

I never asked to be anything but alive and growing

Breathing and being like clouds stitched to ground

I never asked to cultivated

Coveted

Converted into cash and clothing

But honestly I’m used to it

Used to being confined to fields stretching miles

Yet never allowed to grow where I please

The breeze blows and speaks to me of a freedom

And ain’t freedom a funny thing

How they claimed to free the slaves but only gave them a new name

And these days I watch black and brown bodies tend the machines that tend me

Hands shackled by a chain unseen

Capitalism and cotton go hand in hand

Watered by tears on a blood fat land

White cotton picked from brown stalks by tbrown hands compelled by white people

I’ve always wondered what it might be like if we were all just let be

Instead here I be

Cultivated

Coveted Alive

SASA AAKIL, 20, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD

About COTTON from Washington Performing Arts

In February 2023, Washington Performing Arts began a multi-month residency with Words, Beats & Life (WBL) centered on COTTON – a multi-media performance piece inspired by an extraordinary body of work by artist-photographer John E. Dowell.

COTTON was imagined, curated, and commissioned by Philadelphia’s Lyric Fest recital series in commemoration of their 20th Anniversary. The work was inspired by photographer John E. Dowell’s similarly named work, COTTON, whose own inspiration was a dream of Dowell’s, in which his late grandmother called upon him to visit the cotton fields of South Carolina, where their ancestors were likely enslaved. Dowell’s haunting and often surreal images situate cotton in an African American narrative both past and present, from rural Southern fields to the concrete canyons of New York City. Rising-star composer Damien Geter crafted an intensely moving song cycle rooted in Dowell’s work, with lyrics by a phenomenal list of poets: Nikki Giovanni, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Afaa Michael Weaver, Lauren K. Alleyne, Charlotte Blake Alston, Glenis Redmond, Alora Young, and Trapeta Mayson.

Legendary mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves performed COTTON alongside the up-and-coming singer Justin Austin, and pianist Laura Ward, an international touring and recording artist and the director of Lyric Fest. With projections of images by Dowell and filmed recitations of the poets accompanying the performance, COTTON was a feast for the senses, a spark for the imagination, and a highlight of the Washington Performing Arts season.

Washington Performing Arts lives into our mission—to champion the arts as a unifying force—with a longstanding dedication to fostering arts education throughout the region, alongside presenting performances. This residency with WBL, the DMV’s only arts education organization exclusively devoted to working with youth around hip hop and spoken word, was structured over six sessions, including attendance at the live performance of COTTON on February 28 as well as a field trip to a D.C.-area plantation. The goal of the residency was to nurture DC-area young poets in developing a body of their own work in response to John Dowell’s expansive photographic oeuvre focused on cotton.

The participants comprised current and past DMV Youth Poet Laureates and Ambassadors and local high school-aged poets. Participants across a range of backgrounds participated in the residency, in recognition that the impact of enslavement, the cotton trade, and the slave trade can be explored from myriad vantage points and lived experiences with profound resonances today. The work created by these poets through the residency—like the multimedia performance of COTTON in February—offers profound opportunities not only to see and hear, but also to listen and contemplate; to reflect and grieve and heal and understand. Thank you for bearing witness.

Calling the Ancestors by John E. Dowell