This post is part of an ongoing #BlackFuturesMonth18 series in February with the Black Lives Matter Network, exclusively shared on Blavity, that aims to explore what the Black feminist future can and should look like for all of us.

Week three of #BFM18 is here! Our second pair this week are poet Amir Sulaiman and visual artist Mawena Yehouessi.

Amir Sulaiman is a poet, recording artist, Harvard Fellow, actor, screenwriter and producer born in Rochester, New York. His partner, this Black Futures Month, is Mawena Yehouessi, co-founder and director of Black(s) to the Future, as well as an artist, dancer, graphic designer and project manager.

Their collaboration brings you their visions of a Black Feminist Future.

"Are You Disconnected"

Poem by Amir Sulaiman

Artwork by Mawena Yehouessi

Bismillah

Laying face down on the moon

stars in my eyes

space dust in my hair

earth so far from here

earth so small from here

I had to exit love and enter fear

to get here

I saw God in the sun,

God in the stars

but not God in the mirror

What, there's no God in Amir?

gold mine in my mind

salt mined in my tears

I’m searching for heaven

but I was already there

like the Kingdom of God

between your eyes and your ears

between your sea and your sky

In your skin, in your hair

If heaven is there then what is here?

Why am I here?

You are a wide floating meadow

with more green than gravity

and more beauty than my eyes can hold

my eyes are swollen trying to drink you in

but my poor eyes cannot bear it

like heavy rain laden clouds

if I don't weep I fear they would explode

But now what will all my weeping win me?

There is no reward for regret.

I would love nothing more

than to bury myself in you

To find a home in your brown body after the sun has warmed you

I’d rather return to die a thousand deaths inside you

Than to live another day of life here

What is there for a man who is living

more death than life?

What will I do?

Answer me, love.

Will you not answer me?

My love

Mawena Yehouessi

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