Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

The question that has been on my mind lately is: what if I allowed myself to already feel like I have enough? What if I am looking to be in community, but I am already in community, with the people I see on a daily basis during my routines, the animals, and plants, my family, my chosen family. What if I am already connected to everything? What if I allowed myself to feel not just happy or joyful, but content, full, satiated? What if I allowed myself to feel like I have enough, to feel like I am enough? Even thinking about it makes my shoulders drop. I exhale and feel the breath in my lungs and it’s something like peace. What if I allowed myself to love not just where I am going, or where I’ve been, but where I am right now, and in that acknowledgment, give praise to everyone who is walking with me on this journey? What would happen?

Today’s poem is an exploration of shouting out ourselves and our community. I love how this poem makes room for complicated praise.

Acknowledgments
by Nkosi Nkululeko

When  I  hear  my  name, I  feel  like  I  am  my own country.  I do not have my parent’s name but their
blood  runs  through  me  like hyphens. Shout  out  to the fam addicted  to  addiction, the conception
of greed, for the  feeling  a  body  has  when  it  has  too  much. I  know men  on  the  block are  full to
the  ends  of  their skin  with  sin. On  the  corners  of  my block, brothas  rep  their  hood  like nations
would. Allegiance  is  the only name  that binds. I  pledge it  like  a  President, one  hand on the  bible,
the  other  dipped  in  blood.  I’m  faithful  to  my  people  with  no  god.  Godless  tribes  deserve  the
shout out, the  call to  the  hopeless. We  have no  church to  burn. Shout  out to  the streets  undone,
the  concrete  that  memorizes  the  word  surrender.  Shout  out to the  surrendered.  You  fail  for us
to  fail  easy. When  I  jog  through  rain  I  feel  each  bulb  catch  fire  on  me.  Watch  me  sing  bright
with a  somber song.  Shout  out  to the women who’ve  sung  for  me. I  am  a  man with  many songs
but  sing  none.  I  want  to  acknowledge  the  homes  I  know,  the  brick  frames  with  smoke  in  the
interior,  I  want  to  give  a  shout  out   to  the  place  that’s  displaced.  The  5  a.m. mornings  where
my city is no longer mine, but belongs to the  cool breeze that sweeps the easy blood off the ground.
Shout  out  to  the  blood, the  body  it  once  belonged  to  must  be  lighter now. Death is sometimes
my shadow, and  when the  block is  full of them it  becomes a  beautiful  carnage  of darkness. Shout
out  to the ones that  finance  the wreckage, the  economical  philosophies  of  place, how  we  lose it
but  never bound  by  the  lack of it. Shout out  to the  lack of, the  absence  in which we  make  home
in. Shout out to  home, the  blues that brings  me  closer to  the  earth  to  sing. Shout out  to  Harlem,
the mangled heaven I know too well to leave.

"Acknowledgments" by Nkosi Nkululeko. Used by permission of the poet.