BIO
Linda Ravenswood is a Poet and Performance artist from Los Angeles. Her work aims towards inquiry and uncovering, holding memory, history, place and lineage as meaningful, and available markers. She was short listed for Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, 2017.
She is the Founding director of Culture Bear, a feminist reportage front;
the Founder of The S1X 2 M1DN1GHT Performance Collective;
and a Founding member of The Melrose Poetry Bureau.
She is a fellow at The Women’s Centre for Creative Work (2016 - 2017)
Linda Ravenswood is NDN / First Nation, (Pokanoket, Wampanoag) and a Mayflower descendant on her mother’s side, and an Indigenous Mestizaje from Baja California Sur on her father’s side. She was raised in Los Angeles by Jewish Holocaust survivors from WWII.
The refugees come like monarchs …...
The soft bigotry of low expectation, sit down back there, you’re dead, in swaddling, hasta los huesos, you are of subtlest shadows, shhhhhhh
we are standing in our night gowns,
with parkas on, holding suitcases and bags.
i re+member
refugees come like
monarchs,
our packs and crowns,
toes in desert silt,
a bone, a ragged bit, a jaw, a cup, my people
we are here and home and gone,
with winds round our frames
to bless
the pilgrimage, our
sky.
women with a two hand pat means food,
a two hand clap breeds our flat and filling meal,
flat song, teeth smiling, extruding corn meal;
across ocean, tortuga belly
full of vegetables, dipping down
the hand made corn scoop,
the simmering flesh,
the best meal you ever had
as sand kicks up its lashes
for grit.
being Latinx means all this is yours,
the golden singing to the black
crepe night, stars our microphones and mirrors.
i walk this desert
i talk out of the side of my mouth
it’s not cowardice
it’s passing
i broke my teeth,
as is our tradition
i broke them and put them to the wind
out behind the break away taverns
where my fathers fathers father
made his diploma in mud
i cupped them in my hand
and show'd them to the ox cart before i threw them —
broken upturned wood slat
my only witness
she’s so beautiful, my legs are tight
i want, want to kiss her,
does my mouth smell good,
i want, i’m starving
when it was truth that the teeth were gone
and would never come back
i raced home to the slag heap to tell the pack
Four were filing down their studs,
and helpers folded in around them, too
in the shifting hierarchy
I sat on the edge of the cot
and ran my tongue o v e r the brackles
where my teeth once piled in
Our tradition makes us strong
and those beyond the night forest fear our bristle faces
in torch light when they try
the border land.
Some times all you have is the fear you
put to another —
The fierce mask
in the t o r c h f i r e
that makes them retreat
I am looking out,
Out as far as going is,
to an across place
where we might Be,
where place is made to hold
and be held
What seems to be a chosen path
becomes
a feathery pile of sticks
in the shadow of a hill;
What seems to be decision,
looms like the falling
last lope of a cardinal over a lake,
descending
and is disappeared forever;
what seems to be choice among red jewels
is only sand
brushed from hands
after a long afternoon
in blue water
The turbine vent spins,
its silver blades flashing in wind, a grey scale zoetrop e
This is truth that cannot be doubted.
Say it so:
Gaté
gaté
paragaté
parasamgaté
Bodhi
Svaha ….
Gone
gone over
gone fully over
Awakened
So be it
Emptiness
no thing --
including human existence --
nothing possesses ultimate substance,
which means
no thing is permanent
and
no thing is apart from all things else
i remember my home
No born, no die
No pure, no stain
no increase, no decrease.
no body,
no thought,
no eyes, no ears
no nose, no tongue
no touch, no imagining
no dumb brain,
no end of dumb brain.
no old, no death
no ouch, no whatfor ouch
no path
no wisdom, no end
But look …. water ….everywher e
When i think about mother
Which seems to roll around every breath
Like a ponderous yet invisible hand,
I remember how she is,
with her happiness, her suffocation,
And I smoothe down my longing
And reside in one piece
in one place
the deep peace of evening
even this camp
i am not a satellite
i am not tethered by a string
i still have my ...
i still have my ...
i still have my ...
my …
i still have me...
Oh my brother, the wind blows!
i still have my ...
my …
We are the replacement people
See your mother’s crepey arms?
These will be yours too,
if you’re lucky enough tobe old
when the rest were swallow’d by a mountain.
If you are lucky enough
you will be the face of hatchet marks,
Bend low with quaking awe.
We are the replacement people
on the streets they walked,
quick stepping to their work,
we see their shadows i
n black and white film,
quick steps on wide avenues
long skirts, hats on heads
same sun, same planet, same water
same sky,
closed system, closed system,
do you understand ?
Water ………. everywhere
and dust