Jacquese Armstrong (she/her) is a writer/speaker/poet who educates, motivates, and inspires from her lived mental health experiences and interprets the pain etched on her mothers’ wombs provided for her reading as a balm for healing to aid in battling the illusion. A 2022 Black Fire—This Time Anthology Summer Fellow with Aquarius Press, author of birthing yourself naturally: motivational reflections on a mental health journey (2022), and blues legacy (Broadside Lotus Press, 2019), Jacquese was the recipient of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and a 2015 Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts. In addition, she creates mental wellness/self-care workshops from an artistic lens and has received training from the Arts & Healing Initiative as a SEA (Social Emotional Arts) Facilitator. Follow her on her website.
stuck in jackson ms tryin to understand (2023)
(with the help of basquiat)
i hear
jean-michel “jim crow”
and all he said was ms with
a blue-black river mississippi
invadin a black man’s head makin
his eyes fire/ yeah makin
his eyes fire
i feel this force-field here
people yell over it
they laugh
loud they
stare you down in righteous indignation
for breathin their air
i feel this force-field here
said it was a stronghold ‘cause i
thought to myself
satan’s been busy here like for
centuries buildin that chasm
buildin that chasm
buildin that chasm that
orchestrates the indignities forced into
a predicated mind
like a bullet
interrupts regulary scheduled
dna
but i just feel
this force-field here
it settles
somewhere about the neck
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