Reflection Poem by Quinsy Gario
The Righting of Disempowerment

We wish to complicate
complexify and confound.
What is it that we're doing here?
Here in this room
in this building
in the Golden Bend
in a city built on
the lack of a conscience.
In June in this very room
Nests were opened up
to treat us
to treat our colonial amnesia.
We forgot to forget
to regard the south
as an afterlife of the north
as an afterthought
of our own discomfort.

For whom are we having
this conversation?
The walls are winking at me
whenever I slightly move to the left
they're eavesdropping
and adding tonight to their collection
of sounds that have
become embedded under the painted ceiling.
Trouble has been brought
within this space
and trouble has been sought
beyond this space
and so trouble must be caught
for this case.
The professional trouble shooters
take the stage to provoke
the air between the lofty ideals
and the structures that confine

the structures that have
pickled expropriation
preserved violently antiquated conservation.
We have to juggle
and swap like the spider
you encounter with a smile
who’s ready to dethrone and humble you.
Brown hands against a black backdrop
are removing labels
and the many stable identities
are in shatters in tatters
the hands move as if sewing a wound
visible for all to see
but only some to truly understand.
The reconciliation with this discrepancy
is a task not without the
dangers of collapsing walls
that might fall on you

as you're surrounded
by the cabinets of horrors
hors d'oeuvres honorific
hospitality transgressing stabilizations
of the past in the present
for future continuous inequality
impropriety in perpetuity.
But we need to disorder
not just rearrange
we need to jumble
and embrace the verb versus the noun.
To decolonize is a shifting
of burdens.
The hands continue to unwrap
and the black barcodes on the white labels
revealing an arithmetic
that cannot be solved in this bend

in this bind
of knowing and having the knowledge
rather than giving in to
the next deadline that is
a distraction from being enmeshed
against our wills our permissions
our intentions of perpetuations.
Nanette and Wayne drop us
within sticky situations
and everything we touch we taste
we hear becomes a ring that tells
us of the world around us.
It's a weight that you can't drop
after the exercise
a suit that fits and is fitted
atop another smile
and tables around which deliberations
carry consequences many centuries later.




What will the consequences
be of tonight?
For you? For us? For complicity?
Are we seeking accomplices
to make our convictions multiple life sentences?
There is a mirror behind the stage
and the two microphones
have become four.
We have multiplied and are noticing
the techniques technologies
structures infrastructures
politics policies.
We have been policed to underestimate
how our movements
are felt beyond the cabinets

politely impatient and with
the foresight to set motions
beyond the boundaries,
exceeding dominant agreements,
we refuse to be beholden to.
Enforced through violent bureaucracies
and broken by revolutions
that escape and remind us
to continue scamming as a development aid.
A development leading away
from predetermined paths.
Lead your rebellion
according to the concert of rebellions
in an entanglement to dismantle
the suits tailored
to restrict your body.
Create another lining
to envelope our bodies.

The wall just winked again
and a conspiracy has started
as we lock hands with
insights and determinations
to account for the futures
that we refuse to foreclose.
The word hope hasn't fallen
and yet the power on display
the power of display
the power from display
pushes past the pitfalls
and the plummeting political temperature
to envision and engender
not just empowerment
but a recognition of the righting
of disempowerment
a restitution of exciting threats
and opportunities to do something else