afloat
Coral Lily, The RichAnt
Water is Life
We all begin, cradled in the water. The storm of
our mother’s womb, we, torrential in our desire to
be known and know the world, initially seek out of
the water. But it is the first home we have ever
known how to be in, and the water, no matter how
seemingly still, will be troubled, will make room
and endure.
On Refusal
At the end of the world, there was a doorway
and the sea.
But before that there was darkness; crowded
bunker made of clay and sand, shoved together
without light, without our fleshly kin. But then
there was a doorway, light and the sea, and boats
meant for something other than retrieving, and
we were put into the belly of the ship. Put there
and meant to live somehow, to not rot from the
inside out. Some of us did. Others when we saw
where we were, above the realm of the ancestors,
fled to them
Jumped and then flew to them.
The dying waters aboard their ship acted as such,
made poison out of what should have been life.
So, when they called some of us to the kitchen, to
make this stale, stagnant water something other
than what it was, we called on the power of Obi, to
see, to know, to last above.
When we landed or met this land, where the soil
did not know our name in the same way, after
weeks and weeks of drinking in the Obi, it was
easy to sense what was to come, what would not
be offered to us. And so, though we had finished
this crossing we too flew home together. Turned
around just flew. Not all of us, but enough for
others to know, enough for there to be more than
just rumor.
Eventually from that flying place we watched the
sharks, watched them follow the ships, equally
hungry for our pound of flesh as them cannibals
leading more of us across. This was also the end of
the world. The end of their way of life. For the
sharks we mean.
We watched as places tended to for thousands of
years slowly became something, they would call
wild, something we would call unmet.
Time in the water passes differently, you know.
There’s this creature that lives at the bottom of
the ocean, and no matter how sealike the
scientists make the conditions, it will not
replicate itself out of the water. Maybe they are
missing the slow and deep time that is found
around the ocean floor, that by simply being there
this creature senses. This is one of my favorite
truths. The easiest fuck you I can think of.
On the Aquatic
and they said We wouldn’t survive it
and all of We haven’t
yet some have
and so, We say We
it came like it always does
a smile
contract
shewas|hewas
stinking of desire: clumsiness
… and rage raging
… clumsily he came
she came couldn’t help to
shewas|hewas
stinking of desire: desiring
and rage: raging
… clumsily …
and they hoped We wouldn’t survive
and all of We won’t
and some must
because if not Us who
hecame|shecame
couldn’t help to
it will come
a handshake
bound
through the land
in the water
thinking she could come to know
panting
thinking he was seeing
the land,
the water,
he could not name
and then she and them that gets to be a single them,
vanished
GO!
hecame|shecame
couldn’t help to
when the ships came
We heard one of them whisper
a whole new world
and We laughed and
the earth kept spinning
and We remained
On Retrieval
Sometimes there is return. Sometimes you have to
go and find. Sometimes the seas’ mysteries
demand to be known and remembered.
Sometimes they come up to meet you, in a
thunderstorm, in a hurricane, the hint of a slave
ship waiting closer to us than the seafloor … to
show what ends we have already lived through.
We are already at the end of many worlds, and
some of us must see the end all the way through …
Bre (Nyx) Byrd
Publab Fellow 2021
Bre (Nyx) Byrd is a writer, performer, plant enthusiast, and PhD student in the Department of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her poetry is a deep dive into memory, grief, race, and relationships to the natural world. Their current body of work engages questions around the “Anthropocene,” apocalypse, and sustainable futures through the lens of African Diaspora, Native/Indigenous Studies, and Black Feminisms. Bre’s writing is influenced by the vision within Zapatismo un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos/a world where many worlds fit and hopes to write her way towards it.
The RichAnt
The RichAnt, born Antwanyce Richardson, is a visual artist who has been painting and creating art for over a decade. A self-taught artist, often described as a Renaissance woman, The RichAnt creates mixed media art using many different forms of media: oils, watercolor, gouache, collage, resin, digital, and more. The RichAnt is also a loving mother of two children. She currently resides and works in her home studio in Maryland.
About the Artwork
Coral Lily | watercolor and gouache on paper | 20 x 20 | 2014