Public Project
We create altars
Over the past three weeks, Altars and Memorials have been created across our city of New Orleans by primarily Black Queer, Gender Non-Conforming, and Trans People. Altars have been created at sites of protests, on bridges, homes and on the streets. Some of our Altars have been torn down by the city! Tossed into rubbish heaps, made invisible as they have tried to make us invisible. But we remain, we are persistent as Blackness is persistent. We continue to rise and rise again. On this Altar is the poem, "Elegy", by Aracelis Girmay: -
"What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed?
Perhaps one day you touch the young branch
of something beautiful. & it grows & grows
despite your birthdays & the death certificate,
& it one day shades the heads of something beautiful
or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out
of your house, then, believing in this.
Nothing else matters.
All above us is the touching
of strangers & parrots,
some of them human,
some of them not human.
Listen to me. I am telling you
a true thing. This is the only kingdom.
The kingdom of touching;
the touches of the disappearing, things."
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