Friday Feature: Joy tabernacle KMT-Battle
- 5 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Joy tabernacle KMT-Battle iz a Two-head Blackwoman, Opulence, mother, lover & crowned Hoodoo Queen. As a writer, she has received residencies and fellowships from Heinz, MacDowell, Callaloo, Vona & Periplus. They are published in many places, including Callalloo and Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Pluck! The journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, Jazz and Culture, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and more. She is the winner of the Discovery Prize from Black Poetry Review. Her work is informed by maroon futurisms, liberation, spiritual fugitivity, & very very Black space-time. She iz the cofounder of North Star Hoodoos, an affiliated marronage of Spirit Workers claiming ownership of the freed self. She iz a traveling ritualist & broommaker with Rootwoman Broomcraft & Apothecary.
funerary rites
we pulled the bowels
outta hell, rinsed the blood
off in the murky monongahela
let them lay, soaking sun,
in the abandoned lot
of wild grasses,
til they bleached ghost
white, twisted and
worked them into silk
dyed them indigo
with our bruises
brown with the iron
of our city + slivers
of our own war-groomed spines
wove them with our teeth + nails
into ring shout regalia
danced with our toes deep
in the coal split tarred cracks
of the East Hills shopping center,
one rum and coke from denise & earl’s,
spit libations, one
quarter
shuffle for every dead girl
who didn’t make it out with us. one
quarter
shuffle for every part of us
who ain’t make it out neither.
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Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.