Reflections by Malika

Malika Aanaïs Lévy-f wrote this poem on the Greyhound bus on the way to State College for this trip in response to the question “Why are you going?”

because she asked me why

i am a living legacy and yes
i mean this precisely in the way that recognizes that's who we all are
we are all the legacy of a people we are all the legacies of many peoples
i am here because and despite the persecution oppression genocide of
my people
the people from
who my life takes breath
i am slavery survived holocaust escaped conquista resurrected
sometime yesterday and now never
tomorrow but always flowing behind some before flashpoint pulsing today
today today crashing
into newly next then and after
ahead i remember who i am going to be i am the
once was who
tricked you disappearing under the waves crashing your hull falling
flat to your shotgun expiring in your gas chamber i was always
going to be
resurrected before you killed me before you saw me before you saw and before
you saw i saw seeing you i was invisible and i saw i saw the after right now right
before and i will still see i was always going to
be and i remember
who i am going to be because i stand on the shoulders of africa yisrael kiskeya in timeless
rock
concert mosh pit i hurl myself into the world with newborn abandon my
hebrew taïno african body ayisyenn all
olives vermilions red corn cherry coconut infused sahara sun baked to perfection like
and i
land on my ancestral dancefloor floating atop the fingertips of past me's the Spirits
who never
left just because they were told i stand
upon the shoulders of three civilizations and i see outside of the Time that would
separate me fragment me i stand
on the shoulders of three civilizations whose destruction completed could not
be carried to the brink because i am still here and because i am
afro semitic carib indigenous my horizon has no
end here i stand
twice high human you survive i legacy