Spinning Out Freedom
This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 27 No. 4, "Standing Out." Find more from that issue here.
I was inspired to create this poem when I first found out that the aryan nation has appropriated the powerful and medicinal indigenous symbol of the spider web, which is know to be a symbol of connection to all living things. Each know of the web the aryan members draw on their forearm symbolizes a person of different ethnicity or religious faith they have harassed and/or killed. This poem is a prayer to recall and return the power of the web and its tradition to our own path for justice and freedom for many-gendered/ many-sexualities/many-spirited peoples.
We are the web of
life and light.
Of all things connected/and unspun.
Like silken dreams we become
an unread map of our ancestors.
Layed out in constellations/
we find our way home.
We are the center
Of something
that remains to be seen,
yet is already imagined.
Slinging and whizzing,
whipping and spinning
out righteousness
and freedom
off of our tongues.
Our web spins outward to galaxies
spreading a grid of possibility
and incantations/that speak
of revolutionary dreams
unspun.
We are pulled taut
from our own
fears and inhibitions/cocooning
what has been built against us
and uncovering a new
landscape.
Our web catches the faces of
deceit and violence,
discrimination and fear.
Where cloth has been unfolded,
like cotton bags
wreaking memories
of slavery,
they are replaced with burlap bags
or migrant workers
in coffee fields and factories.
We are part of the same
global economy
that threatens to cocoon
our/selves.
We spin out threads of
global consciousness
to undo the patterns
of these colonialist mindgames.
We are warriors
spinning light.
Standing on pillars of strength.
Or women loving women.
Of men loving men.
Pushing further out
into galaxies that have
been built by our
struggles against injustices.
Wrapping ourselves
in webs of genders/and sexualities.
Swinging from woven nets
that hold and gather
our many Transatlantic and
Transsexual stories of breath,
body/
mind/
and memory.
We spin out freedom.
We are,
warriors of light
to freedom.
We JUMP/
for revolution.
Our feet have changed.
Our minds have changed.
Our spirits are hungry.
Our path is still.
Our vision is steadfast.
Our legacy is long,
And forthright.
We are at the center of
a legacy,
a psalm for justice,
a map for freedom.
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Cara Page
Cara Page is a lesbian performance poet and visual artist/activist of African/Seminole/Polish/Czechoslovakian descent in Durham, NC. Through her own cultural work she seeks to create spaces of healing and empowerment through the arts. (1999)