Song for the Unconscious Self; or Liberation in Fo’ Parts

          “Cain’t worry ‘bout what anutha [            ]think,
            now that’s liberation and baby I want it”
             – Outkast

 

 

makes a “nigga”
“real” meaning
here we are
what we are, what
we still don’t know 

victims of their own
psychic residuum–
say “nigga”
and try to remember
anything else

of a distant brother
you can tell y’all related
by how you mimic
his nostrils when pissed
or sobbing


with a mouth
 and ask,
“Now what ‘nigga’
feel like having ‘fun’
after    all     that?”

Think:             blank – meaning mirror-stage 





Think:             apperception – as if black bodies are





Think:             blood – becoming the same skin 





Think:             resistance – to occupy a wound

 

 

by Jonah Mixon-Webster

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Jonah Mixon-Webster is a text/sound poet, and teaching artist from Flint, MI. He is a current Ph.D. candidate in English Studies with an emphasis in Poetry & Paracolonial Poetics at Illinois State University where he also serves as the editorial assistant for Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. A Callaloo Fellow, his poetry and sound art is featured or forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Oaken Transformations: Poetry & Sculpture Walk, Los Angeles Review of Books’ Radio Poemerica, and Kinfolks: a journal of black expression.