A mother rabbit birthed at least three bunnies in a niche of the house – enclosed on three sides with only a northern mossy exposure – mostly safe and hidden from owls, hawks and coyotes. They nibble on young dandelion and clover leaves. They are joy.
My one and only baby’s very first Easter and Spring. A surprise of daffodils under a white oak tree at our first house and home on Grace Street in Chicago. Mother, son, full of grace.
I don’t know where the stuffed white rabbit with pink, acrylic eyes and pink, satin ears came from — exactly. But I’ve had it forever, before memory, so I pretend that it was presented to the baby girl born in late October, just before Halloween. Or gifted to the baby girl on her first Easter. Or won for the toddler girl at her first carnival.
Before I was a mother to a boy, I — an only child — was a teenaged auntie to a beautiful boy named +Tony+ [Giovanni Anthony Martinez] born in Spring 1986. I learned from him that I might become a mother to a son one day even though I was sure I was meant only to be a mother to a daughter. And that, was a wonderful revelation.
i read that an African green mamba escaped its Dutch trafficker, a collector and captor of living beings
i am someone who never recovered from reading Kingsolver’s “Poisonwood Bible” i am someone who never recovered from experiencing Alex Haley’s “Roots” on American television for eight consecutive nights
i am someone who imagines an exquisite vengeance for the fugitive, deadly snake upon the low people of the Netherlands, the hubris of those who would build higher and higher dams to contain the rising, wild seas with transatlantic shipping wealth, every last cent: descendant of African blood money while they continue in unironic chant for their tulipped nation’s and bland continent’s homogeneity:
make Europe great again!
while, i am someone who quietly incants:
may the viper in silent slither at their coming fest of Sinterklaas strike them in the street as they joyfully parade with their black-faced Zwarte Piet
i entered the following directive and multiple variations of that general concept into the photo/art application that i subscribe to:
A carnival at night featuring a Ferris Wheel with a sign reading "Ouroboros" and a roller coaster with a sign reading “Life" - with fortune teller / psychic booth in foreground
ai has trouble with words, specific compositional and artistic directives – although its rogue mashups are sometimes weirdly gorgeous
i’ll need to commission an artist in order to get closer to the carnival scene i’ve experienced in my liminal imagination and that has been living and lodged there for more than a decade
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 