GLOW | QUEER POETRY FEATURE: Tanea lunsford lynx

Happy Pride everyone! As we prepare for parades and celebrations, we also honor our queer elders who came before us, especially the trans women of color activists who have started these modern Pride movements, and who are still fighting for their lives and for a better world we can all benefit from. This month's featured poet is Tanea Lunsford Lynx.

​Tanea Lunsford Lynx is a is a writer, abolitionist, and fourth generation Black San Franciscan on both sides. She earned a BA from Columbia University  and an MA from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She has more than 10 years of experience as a performing artist, curator, activist and educator in San Francisco. ​​

​My name is Tanea Lunsford Lynx and I am a fourth generation Black San Franciscan on both sides. I am the daughter of an incarcerated father. I am an abolitionist. I have more than ten years of experience as a writer, performing artist, cultural worker, activist and educator in San Francisco. I am currently working on a novel called, “Sanctuary City” about a Black family that endures fire and grief in the midst of gentrification, police violence, and erasure in San Francisco. I am also working on a collection of prose poems that accompanies the novel, called “I Used to Live Here”. Although I write primarily about San Francisco, my work extends to the landscape of many American cities with withering Black American populations that are enduring gentrification and police violence in this moment. 

The day before I was born, my father was sentenced to his first strike in a California prison. Much of my childhood included visiting him behind a thick glass window and waiting at the mailbox for an envelope with his handwriting on it. My hunger to write letters in response to my father is the earliest excitement I can remember. Through our letters, I learned the magic of writing as something that could make the gaping space between us feel a little smaller. As I grew up, I became well acquainted with the punitive hand of the prison industrial complex. When I was fourteen, I learned the power of resistance and community organizing. I learned to combat the punitive hands gripping and draining the life out of my family. Writing and activism give me strength to combat structural violence and oppression when I feel powerless and invisible. 

I write because it allows me to create a world where my life and those of my loved one’s are valued. I have had the pleasure and honor to attend a number of writing workshops to gain feedback on my literary work, including the Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab (San Francisco, CA), VONA (Voices of Our Nation) (Miami, FL), Napa Valley Writer’s Conference (Napa, CA), Lambda Literary Retreat (Los Angeles, CA), and Under the Volcano (Tepoztlan, Mexico). Some of the fellowships and residencies I have been awarded include The San Francisco Writer’s Grotto, The Vermont Studio as a Rising Voices Fellowship recipient, Ox-Bow Artists Residency as a fully funded fellow, and Under the Volcano as a Grace Paley Fellow. 
As an artist, I aim to create work that does not translate itself, but resides deeply in Black experience for Black audiences and readers. 

Grief, a series Pt. 1
 
I’ve decided that I will not be ruined this summer.
 
I’ve decided that I will not be jekyllhyded by grief
That I will not hide hurt from myself
out of fear
 
I look forward to going there.
I look forward.
 
I’ve decided,
I look forward to the time
letting sadness and longing
reel out of me
through my back
and into the floor.
 
I’ve decided to choreograph my own grief dance
 
I’ve decided to spend my time
(this time)
believing that healing is possible without being swallowed.
 
Without emerging,
by cutting myself triumphantly out of the belly of a great whale
after lingering in the darkness there.
 
I have decided.
That it does not have to be wholeconsuming
 to be real.
 
I have decided.
I can stop when it hurts too much.
 
Fold the corner of the page,
and return to it when I’m ready.
 
I have already decided.
I will not be broken in half this summer.
 
It’s too late to grieve the old way,
by way of being eatenalive.
 
Of ignoring the bleeding out.
Of becoming nothing
until I can’t taste my food.
 
I have decided.
to laugh at the audacity of humidity.
 
To let my anxious stomach
fall out of my butt
when it drops,
If it dares.
 
To love.
 
I have decided to love.
(in the present).
 
I have decided.
I can be healed by the medicine
spun by my own fingers
for the top of my own head.
 
I have decided.
that I am still curious
about joy
in the deep mist of griefjunglefloor.
 
I have decided.
In my own image.
I can dance with two lovers.
Laughing and crying.
With both feet
taking turns
then together
off of the ground.
 
 ​Still Here,
 
​I used to live here.
My whole hood a museum now
And my whole city a playground with rules against me.
 
This used to be a good place for a young witch to practice raising hell with two too-small hands
A place for getting on the back of the bus without paying and still feeling dignified
shouting BACK DOOR.
This used to be a good place to be nobody.
To hide from the too-rough fingers of the world under thick fog until you caught your
breath and could run again.
Or so I'm told.
By the time we got here four generations ago all the good hiding spots for catching your breath were taken or we wasn't allowed to buy.
 
You used to be able to find a lost aunty in the Tenderloin who told good stories and forgot which secrets were who's and told you which uncle to steer clear of
 
You used to be able to dream about life as a low rider and a Black cowboy here
 
My mama didn't speak Spanish but sometimes she wasn't talking to Pepe's mama because
Pepe’s mama (who we all thought was Selena reborn) took our clothes out of the dryer
when she was impatient. And sometimes they were best friends on late Sunday night
washes.
 
You used to could have lil’ baby dreams and get the best directions from a man nodding
off while standing up
 
You used to be able to get your fortune told by the man in front of the liquor store who
had been revived from death twice for the price of one loose Newport
 
This town used to be small enough for your paternal grandfather to rescue your mother
while she foamed at the mouth from alcohol poisoning wearing all white in the dark den
of Sam Jordan's off third street.You used to be able to have all hands on deck after watching a loved one fall off the wagon.
Again.
And again.
 
My grandmother used to lean over to the left side in a chair, using her right hand to rub
huge circles on her hip when rain was coming. My grandmother who burped when she
was feeling anxious.
 
You used to be able to have a grandmother here.
 
I'm 17 years old when my boo and I have matching Jordan's and matching North Faces
zipped up to our chins. We kick out the red ‘stop request’ signs on the M train and put
them on a necklace and wear them like a prize.
 
The first time going into the tunnel at West Portal I thought I was so big I crouched my
neck into my shoulders so as not to bump my head and I was transformed into someone
who was from here on the other side. There is an entire microcosm of a dark world ruled by 2nd grade teachers in the tunnels between West Portal and Van Ness station. I have seen them with my own eyes.
 
It ain't even a Blondies downtown no more.
 
Where are all the black & brown children in this city?
Somewhere being treated like extinction.
 
They dug up our bones when they turned over the dirt in them projects where Anthony's
granny used to live. It's a high rise now. With the best views any building built on black
back bones could build.
Or so they say.
they won't let me up to see the view.
 
My head fell off while running to catch the 54 again today
It’s an anniversary. I remember missing the bus like this when I went home to my
greatgrandmother, our famous mustard seed. She sewed my head back onto my neck
again and sang me her famous mustard seed song called "girl you ain't got no options."
She sang it in the panic soprano falsetto voice, the one in the key of "this house just won't
burn down will it?" The one in the pitch of tired 24 hour Safeway light. And it was
soothing.
 
Besides having two girlfriends, both named Monique, with several children each, my
father assures me that I am the cutest cute that ever cuted. Until one day I am nine years
old and I get my hair relaxed and my thick locks become a whisper in the shadow of what
they used to be. And my head feels too light. Without saying so with his mouth, I have
become an adult and he stops coming to pick me up on Saturdays.
 
I used to live here.
 
Several leagues beneath the sand and sea at Ocean Beach where people are burning out
fog machines to keep the attraction going,
there is another layer of alternate reality,
a universe where I can’t find parking anywhere in the Mission.
And the light goes out at my grandmother’s old house, but none of us lives there
And the house with our multi-generational miracle in it is nearly up to 1 million dollars
on Zillow tumbling profit as it gets bought and sold every year
And I see people whose singing voices made me cry with joy, lying in the street with no shoes on
And I’m losing teeth in all my dreams
 
I used to live here.
 
Before my sister had the baby and summer returned in September in time to celebrate.
 
When Cesar Chavez was Army street and I only knew one Portrero Hill (and there was
no pizza or no dog walking there).
Before NoPa.
When we couldn’t be queer so we had to really enjoy our Halloweens in the Castro. When the Metreon was still new and the fast slide in Yerba Buena gardens was the top of the world and downtown was a Friday night activity brought to you in part by a long paper transfer or a pass with a Y on it.
 
I know hood and hippy talk. I know “ain’t”. I know “hyphy” and “gumbo”.
I know that you don’t have to get out of the car to enjoy the view but the wind has magic in it. I know that nobody puts their feet in the water but there’s a blessing in it if you do.
 
I used to live here and I’m coming back for all my shit.
I’m coming back for all our shit.
All of our after-BART-stops-running shenanigans.
All of our heart-to-hearts around Lake Merced a million times. After all the little things we got away with stealing at Stonestown Mall.
After our standing in line for Jordan’s and driving our mother’s cars without licenses and being curious about the significance of why the warning siren blares on Tuesdays at 12 of all times?
 
I am coming back for our San Francisco, whether or not they let me across the bridge.
I want to see it up close. I want to see us upclose.
I want to meet all of our mothers hanging out the windows looking left and right for us to come barreling down the blocks when it’s time to come home.
I want this for all of us.
I want it to be how it was when I used to live here.