Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

My friend Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons possesses a vision that should be viral. I participated in her art project, Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity. If you chanced upon it, you were transformed. Magda organized two hundred people to walk from the southern edge of Central Park to Madison Square Park.

Dressed in white robes, we strode down 5th Avenue, carrying placards. I held a bouquet of sticks and roses wrapped with twine. Others walked with signs that said “Gratitude,” “Angel,” “Love,” “Radical Love.” Puppets representing important Cuban artists such as the singer Celia Cruz and the great poet José Martí presided over us. Poets read their poems at historically important sites along the journey. At the end, we danced.

Pedestrians stopped to listen; tourists pulled out cell phones. Many filmed this mass of human beings parting the great sea of foot traffic in New York. No taxi or truck drivers seemed annoyed at having to wait at stoplights longer than normal. Some even shouted words of support. I mean what kind of person would you be to protest a walk for love?

It made me wonder this: what if we designated an international holiday guided by Magda’s vision, one in which we paused to celebrate and reflect upon our commonality? A holiday that did not gather us under the banner of patriotism, but under the banner of Radical Love? Magda’s celebration reconfigured public space in a practice guided by the spirit of the Orisha Yemaya, the patron of water, rivers, lakes, oceans, and seas. Yemaya is also known for powerful nourishment, especially through that water.

Today’s poem professes the healing properties of water and the restorative powers of language to renew our connection to each other.

Mami Told Me to Put Water under the Bed
by Peggy Robles-Alvarado

When I was seven: hot with fever, small 
pocked body searching for relief, my chapped 
lips keeping the beat of a body pulsing to an
illness no doctor could find. 

When I was fifteen: a vessel for an unsettled 
storm and growing resentment, my curves
becoming razor-sharp war stories told
through mouths of boys that had too many teeth.

When I was twenty-three: Abuela’s inheritance
of forked uterus and spiked cervix threatened
to scorch my timeline as it had done to hers
too many years too soon.

—Water would save you, Mami said—

Water would drown out the death that wanted 
so fiercely to map itself onto my back,
pour herself into all the ache, replace 
the unknown with ebb and flow, fill me
with a love so hard it could detach me from the fall.

And I came to know water is synonymous
with woman,
with warrior,
with ritual.
My mouth became
a well,
a waterfall,
and finally, a weapon
so sharp, so wet
it could cut the 
chaos of any curse.

Water would sever my soul from collapse,
free my head of locks too heavy to hold, 
reteach my bones to speak survival,
pour molasses into my seams, 
and rise as the ocean claims me as 
her daughter over and over again.

Tonight, I will place a glass of cool water
under my bed, listen for the song of my
ancestors that says: We would never
let you drown.

"Mami Told Me to Put Water Under the Bed” by Peggy Robles-Alvarado. Used by permission of the poet.