Before we jump in, I have to squeal a little bit. I am such an admirer of Robert’s therapeutic, gentle musings, and Nya’s expansive, celestial observations. Both writers beckon us to connect to ourselves and the world around us. If you haven’t yet subscribed to their Substacks, this may be the perfect day to do so.
“Ad astra per aspera” - to the stars through hardship.
An episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stirred my friend Robert so deeply that he reached out to me and Nya, inspiring us to collaborate. In the episode, Una, a character experiencing discrimination that threatened her life and career, talked about finding her salvation in the stars. She hoped that journeying to the stars would allow her to leave her life of hardship behind.
We’re releasing poems on struggle, birth, and rebirth, to explore what it means to still reach for the stars through hardship.
In this second of our three-part poem collaboration (you can read part one here), Nya, Robert, and I write poetry about the theme of birth.
See if you can catch the space and light within the particular facets of each poem.
What does the concept of birth stir within you? Anticipation? Pain? Hope? Creation? Loss? Labor?
Beyond the light
by Robert Monson
A pinprick of light beckons to me
Here in the womb of uncreated days,
light and dark swirl together
and everywhere one can hear
the low rumble of life eager to burst forth.
Can you hear the slow, booming, rumbles?
The ominous sounds that precede joy
Time waits for no one.
But...
somehow I know it waits for me.
Who am I to be when the light fully meets me?
When that shimmering brilliance fills all in all?
who am I to be when uncreation
and creation
finally wink slyly at one another?
It's time.
We Are Alive
by Nya S. Abernathy
What has to come together
For me to be seen?
What has to be aligned
For me to be known
And alive
In this space, in this time?
How do you draw together
Each needed piece?
Without a doubt
How do you realize
That you have become
So alive
A part of space, a part of time?
That wind in your lungs
That touch on your body
The blue-bright beat of a heart
That knows each body alive
Alive
Who has come together
So we are seen?
Who has become aligned
Each of us known
And alive
In this space, in this time?
We've gathered together
Every piece
Without a doubt
We know, it's no surprise
We have become alive
So alive!
There's a wind between us and it's
In our lungs
I feel you, you feel me I know we are
Alive, we are alive!
The shared beat of our hearts
Burning bright
A hot blue brand new radiant light
Is alive, we're alive!
It's amazing, its wondrous
That we could be
And here we are, right now,
You and me
Alive, we're alive.
impossible child by Sharifa Stevens (CW: themes of sexual assault, death) impossible child they said her existence an anomaly every breath borrowed she vacillates between hubris (because, baby, existing in spite of is a flex) and existential angst (she looks at the night sky and whispers to it am i a mistake? or worse, has God, nestled just out of sight in those stars, has God neglected to see me?) daughter of a barren woman granddaughter of a woman raped into motherhood great-granddaughter of a woman who fled she was birthed into an inheritance of survival blood impossibility and carbon no copy, though but yes, an echo radicalized from the womb to be suspicious of gamblers posing as practitioners our bodies, their dice, their tokens, their playing cards theirs: the house that never loses ours: the weathering the gaslighting the neglect the experimentation dying and death with no anesthesia (bring back the midwives protecting wombs’ constellations —God said Abram’s descendants would be like the stars— in the face of pharaoh bring back maternal life) the impossible child imagines those tiny bodies floating bloated in the nile finds her kindship in limp dimpled hands spins the stars backward— through the turning of pages to Hagar—wilderness sister in the cloud of witnesses oppressed by a barren woman raped into motherhood desperate to flee progenitor in the impossible prone and parched eyes dimming from the indifferent sun her gaping mouth and dying son: a question does God see does God see me God condescends and wears her questions as a name makes water and revives her a kind of second birth points her back into slavery to live her body a witness her body an indictment life? impossible yet here she is, just the same part of a constellation of witnesses, impossibilities incarnate their beingness their hereness is an act of God subversive as a manger under a starry night
My friends are geniuses. These poems are incredible. I will have to sit with them for awhile. 🖤
OMG! Powerful, mind blowing! Thank you all 🙏! These are treasures.