Zoom (As Told by the Commodores)
Reflections on a year of Heirloom, ecological spillover, and a newfound affinity for birdwatching
“English is a wonderful mercantile language. You can get a lot of trade done with English. But you would find it very difficult to validate the psychic and spiritual existence of your life.” - Toni Cade Bambara
...an altered life lived on an ideal coast we’d lay washed up on, instancy and elsewhere endlessly entwined - "Eye on the Scarecrow" by Nathaniel Mackey
I've always thought it apt that spring is an Aries, the way plants come back to life, bloom with gusto, "ramming" our airways with energy & confidence. I step a lil different once the sun is out, the way its rays make love to brown skin & leave it in afterglow. Cherry blossoms bloomed early this year, a harbinger of what heat is yet to come. How am I to sigh and enjoy such beauty when I know what it costs?
But mannn as soon as that sun hits? I’m OUTSIDE.
Returning warmth also harkens the return of both migratory and hibernating species, many of which can be found in the nucleus of the Town. I never was much of a bird person before moving to Oakland – during college, I had immense respect for my friends who chose to pursue bird research, spending their days getting pecked, prodded and defecated on to gather important data. To this day, I still eye seagulls with skepticism and slight disgust, and any bird flying overhead, despite their plumage, makes me worry about what might drop from their rear (insert silly story about narrowly avoiding getting shit on by a seagull in Agadir, then comically running down to the beach to dodge the reload). But with distance comes gratitude, and most days I find myself sitting, walking, skating, basking at Lake Merritt, home of the first “legally” established wildlife refuge, making nice with the herons, ducks-a-plenty, songbirds and geese who call the lake home. I mean, have you ever seen a blue heron tip-toe through the water at sunset?
Such simple acts of beauty fill me with delight. A blue heron at sunset, the first sip of morning coffee, watching Cholula yawn as big as she wants to, watching vacant lots burst with native plants (thank you local seed bombers). Time moves so fast these days, I have to remind myself to pause and smell the jasmine, so to speak. The anniversary of my debut poetry collection, Heirloom, has come and gone, and to be quite frank, it snuck up on me. I didn’t quite believe my mom when she told me each passing year seems to blow by quicker than the last, but as I power walk towards my late twenties, what was once a crawl is turning into a light jog (and I hate running). Last April I was unboxing the first copies of the collection, almost unwilling to believe that this feat had been achieved. This April, I am taking a pen and slicing through pages I love, but in a different way. What a difference a year makes.
We have all been changed by the past six months, as multiple genocides persist, the Western World ramps up its hyper-militarism both domestically and abroad, while simultaneously shutting down community services, and impending food crises loom in the distance. If you read the news, you’ll find yourself wondering what day will finally be the last. It feels as though, with all our advancements and technology, we are barreling towards an uncertain end. And yet, I am renewed with gratitude for those who have chosen to engage with the work, to not shy away from the horror, but imagine what life could look like beyond it. So perhaps not an end, but a portal. We emerge, our wings unfurl.
I began this newsletter with birds because birds are some of the most misunderstood and maligned larger species of animals on the planet. And though I am not a bird expert or even an avid birder at that, lately I’ve been looking towards the sky more often, peering through the leaves of trees, looking for the creatures that take flight skillfully and often. What a gift it is to fly. In “Forever Gone” ornithologist and writer J Drew Latham, remarks how both the enslaved and the Maroons looked towards birds, particularly the now extinct Carolina parakeet, as symbols of freedom, observing social flocks that resisted, escaped, were persecuted, mourned their fallen brethren. Sharing refuge as flight. As long as humans have been able to crane their necks skyward, the majesty and miracle of flight fills our hearts with fervent desires of freedom.
When I was a young child, one of my favorite books was The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton. I was so awestruck by the book, largely because of the message, but because one of the illustrations bore an uncanny resemblance to my grandfather. Occasionally, I would flap my little arms really hard to see if I had that type of flight in me. My cousin and I used to sky-gaze, asking each other what we thought clouds tasted like. I thought obviously, cotton candy, and in sheer Gemini fashion, I can’t remember what my cousin said because my answer was of course, the best and most accurate. We promised each other that when it was our time to ascend to the Beyond, we would sneak a bite of the clouds to see who was right.
I’ve been doing a lot of flying of my own lately, with my book tour taking me throughout California, New York, New Haven, Portland, Atlanta and Denver to name a few, though this kind of flight bears a different goal, I suppose. I wince at “carbon offset” promises that upcharge flight costs, and being in the airport is like being in a petri dish of viruses post-mask mandate and isolation requirements. But there I was, miles above any bird, perhaps below spirit, caught in the liminal space of stratocumulus clouds, reading Octobers by Sahar Muradi, rapt by the words: “who wants to be a spore?”
Flight and air, travel and aerosols. Carry on like pollen, like spore, like smoke. Its ephemerality overemphasized, its impact lingers. Who is allowed to fly? When does flight become fleeing? What does the air carry? New reports of avian flu present in chickens and cows in multiple states across the United States, with 40% of dairy cows in the Texas Panhandle alone testing positive, where 82% of the state’s milk is produced. This, after thousands of livestock were killed during last year’s wildfires. This poultry outbreak is part of overlapping crises: factory farming, poor working conditions, industrialization, and food system collapses. And yes, chickens can’t fly (though some might argue that the 5-13 seconds the bulbous little birds take to the air counts), but strains of the avian flu have already been killing massive numbers of wild birds, including endangered species like the California condor. In the last half century alone, North America has lost approximately 3 billion breeding birds due to predation (keep your cats indoors people), climate change and habitat loss. Now during the era of extinction, panzootic emergences and resurgences threaten an already inflamed planet.
Though current transmission to human populations is “low,” I’m not entirely convinced. Given our response to COVID-19, the CDC doesn’t inspire much confidence. People in New York are being warned to keep their distance from geese and other wild birds, and while this is based in fact outside of animal to human transmission, it feels as though we are venturing deeper into a society of intensified borders that make even simple pleasures a luxury. Moreover, I’m shocked at how many ecologists, environmental activists and land stewards have not acknowledged the connection between environmental degradation and viruses – much of which impact a viral underclass manufactured through social structures that alienate and circulate viruses among marginalized populations. I suppose, if I am not honest about my fears, I risk an inauthenticity that betrays the poems in Heirloom.
So here I am right, at Lake Merritt, once again, staring off at black crowned herons, cormorants, egrets and small brown birds, who, by global standards, aren’t really at any risk of extinction, but exist in a vulnerable liminal space that I suppose we all occupy at some point or another. I think about the things that have been taken from us, or rendered unsustainable, dangerous, fenced off from touch. Just over the edge of Heirloom’s anniversary and approaching my 27th birthday, I am filled with a new kind of melancholy, stuck between an old, dying world and inching towards a new one that has yet to be born. How do I celebrate when the future is dying right in front of my eyes? How have we squandered our inheritances? How might we use our inheritances to imagine new futures, to take flight?
What have I inherited? My grandmother’s nerve, her sweet potato pie recipe, a hankering for catfish, a needle and thread, lust for life, an eye for magic in the mundane, resilience born of generational struggle, my mother’s anxieties, dirty air, but also the tools to clean it, my uncle’s laughter, my auntie’s temper, a desire for a garden of my own, where I can watch the birds chirp and flirt, so that maybe one day I can imitate their exodus.
Personal announcements:
I will be reading at Medicine for Nights in SF April 21st (3:30-5:30 pm PST) with Karla Brundage, Kevin Dublin and Arthur Kayzakian
I will be reading alongside the incomparable Daniel B. Summerhill and James Cagney at Santa Clara University April 25th (6-7:30 pm PST)
What I’m currently reading:
Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean by Imani D. Owens