Alexis Pauline Gumbs - Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity

spill

2016 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Designed by Heather Hensley

Typeset in Chaparral Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gumbs, Alexis Pauline, [date] author.

Title: Spill : scenes of black feminist fugitivity /

Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2016. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016015534

ISBN 9780822362562 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 9780822362722 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 9780822373575 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH : Spillers, Hortense J. Black,

white and in colorPoetry.

Classification: LCC PS3607.U5459 S65 2016 |

DDC 810.9/89607300904dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015534

Cover art: Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Now There Are Three Ways To Get This Done: Your Way, Their Way Or My Way, 2014, India ink, oil pastel, acrylic paint, and collage, 48 x 36. Created for The Tituba Black Witch of Salem Drawing Series inspired by I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde, 1994. Image courtesy of Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Jenkins Johnson Gallery.

TO BLACK WOMEN

who make and break narrative

/ / /

after and with

Black White and In Color

by Hortense Spillers

spill

spil/

verb

Origin

Old English spillan, kill, destroy, waste, shed (blood); of unknown origin.

And so I was trying to ask the question again, ask it anew, as if it had not been asked before, because the language of the historian was not telling me what I needed to know. Which is, what is it like in the interstitial spaces where you fall between everyone who has a name, a category, a sponsor, an agenda, spokespersons, people looking out for thembut you dont have anybody.

HORTENSE SPILLERS

This writing started to spill out one day when I was listening to Hortense Spillers speak at the Feminist Theory workshop at Duke University. I had been reading and writing about Spillers for years, but something became clear that day about my relationship to her work. What kept me coming back to her essays over and over again was not only what she said (though what she says about race, gender, capitalism, and literature is enough to come back for forever); it was also how she said it. Again and again, there were phrases in her work that did far more than make her point. They made worlds. They invited affect. They brought to mind nameless women in unknown places who were laughing and looking sideways at each other and a world that couldnt understand them.

I started this experiment thinking that I could take specific phrases from particular essays in Black, White, and in Color out of context, and then I realized that I could never take them out of context. Or that context couldnt take them at all. Which is to say that when I turned these phrases, doors opened and everyone came through. All the black women writers Spillers wrote about and didnt write about. All the characters those black women writers acknowledged and ignored. All the people living novelistic lives without arcs or arks to save them. As usual, the project took over and offered scene after scene out of time and invited voices and settings that I cant claim to have invented. It is either that I was craving these scenes and these voices or they were craving me and we met up at the hot spot called Black, White, and in Color.

This space, which is a temporary space, which we must leave, for the sake of future travelers and our own necks, is a sacred dedicated space. Libation for the named and the nameless. This is for black women who made and broke narrative. The quiet, the quarrelling, the queer. This is where. This is what. This is how.

spill (v) 1. cause or allow (liquid) to flow over the edge of its container, especially unintentionally.

Youll spill that coffee if youre not careful.

SYNONYMS : knock over, tip over, upset, overturn

the ground shakes with us

the gathering women

grows rich grows brown grows deep

the gathered hands women

grown brown grown women

the sure determined feet

the ground grows everything we eat

the graceful stomping women heading home

ungrateful women populating poems

the ground has everything it needs

we have never been alone

the sky sings for us

the rainmaking women the rage-taking women

the blood

the sky so open so nose wide open

cant refuse the shape of our lungs

cant bear to remain above

the sky sees the shoulders that shrug off hate

and celebrate and hug

the sky slows the rhythm by falling out

and down and done and drug

the sky begins to know itself

we breathe it in as love

the water waits for us

the wide-eyed women the walking women the worst

the water washes the war wrung women

the wailers the whistle the first

the water waists of the undrowned women

the hope floats women the strong

the water knows us

the whole-note women

the half-step harmony song

the fire frees us

the fast-ass women the fall-in-love women the freaks

the fire is full of the all-out women

the walk-out women the sweet

the fire is finding the love-lost women

the worth-it women the ones

fire is blazing the brash blues women

the black-eyed women

the wiry women with guns

the fire is becoming the sun

our work here is not done

spill

spill (v) 2. (of liquid) flow over the edge of its container. Some of the wine spilled onto the floor.

SYNONYMS : overflow, flow, pour, run, slop, slosh, splash

she lit a candle for Tuesday. she lit a candle for sweat. she lit a candle when you woke up and the sheets were wet. she lit a candle for lovers. she lit a candle for friends. she lit a candle for maybe and for sometimes and for depends. she poured some water for cooling. she poured some water for sleep. she drank some water for the things she said she would do and forgot that week. she offered food to the corners and to the mourners and the ghosts. she planted grass for the exiles and the stateless and the hosts. she chanted peace to the pilgrims and the playmates and the pimps. she chewed on glass for the mothers and never even winced. she prostrated before the teacups and the teachers and the books.

and it is still it is still it is still

it is still just as bad as it looks.

let the bathtub overflow with hot water and quilt pieces. let the grit of everyday settle to sandbar. let the soap get lost in love letters. soak out their lying blue blood. let the salt of the tears she was saving and the sweat she used up scour her skin like the tough love of black teachers. let porcelain become slate against her back.

she doesnt care.

let it seep into her hair with the whispered blood of moontime. let her hold her breath for now, submerge for evidence, eureka. let her sink into the sum of wet mosaic over brown. immersed in the material of what? what now?

the same crunch the same stem the same sweet green wetness again.

her heart is a pot full of greens to chew and swallow all the nourishment she knows.

she used to salt it. overcook it. contaminate it with swine. she used to leave it on the stove all day and forget it half the time. she even cut it with molasses once and washed it down with wine. why isnt love red like it should be. her growing heart. aint flesh and muscle like it could be.