A: Because mother rage cannot be contained
Q: Why can a miracle fit in the palm of a hand?
A: Because a newborn’s wail is the birth of a new universe
Q: Why must our children inherit fear?
A: Because we carve a hole in the sky to admire our beautiful American money
Q: Why can’t I sleep during a full moon?
A: Because when I uncover my shoulders I find my wings have been replaced by miraculous metals
Q: Why does the Sun love the earth?
A: Because sisters know
Q: Why is love a grief-vessel?
A: Because we leave a trail of dreams as we carry stories to the living touch museum so the Earth will never forget we were here
Q: Why does the body blossom in reverse?
A: Because the womb is a nest made of foraged treasure
Q: Why do my dreams insist on erasing my memories?
A: Because the wind scatters me like seed
Q: Why did we ever doubt our divinity?
A: Because being seen can feel like fire under your skin
Q: Why does the future evaporate?
A: Because we have faith in the perennial
Q: Why do the flowers sing to the sleepless moon?
A: Because every prayer is made of hunger
Q: Why does the night bloom flowers?
A: Because the birds know nothing of tomorrow and yet they still sing
We worked on this project for two months specifically in response to your submission call. We began with letters to each other, from which I constructed an erasure poem and Heidi made a series of three collages from the erasure poem, we explore the themes of Motherhood, love for humanity and the Earth, and our collective fear of the future. To conclude this project, we wrote each other a series of 6 “why” questions and wrote out our answers beforehand not knowing what questions the other would ask of us. Then we chose the most appropriate answers and braided the questions and answers together. Each couplet is a question by one and a response from the other. This is inspired by Eileen Myles’ and Brendan Constantine’s poem “WHY I Am/BECAUSE You Are,” which can be found here: https://rattle.com/why-i-am-because-you-are-by-brendan-constantine-andi-myles/
We chose the mediums of erasure poetry and collage because there is nothing quite like the experience of motherhood to erase and then reconstruct a woman’s identity into a newfound collage of herself. Motherhood is the ultimate universal experience—everyone on this Earth was born to a mother, and yet there are few experiences inherently lonelier than motherhood. For many, it can be isolating, it can strip away a woman’s sense of identity, it can feel precarious and uncertain and like learning how to be a person all over again.
So much care and tenderness went into this project, in much the same way that mothers are tender with their babies and also in the way that mothers need the world to be tender with them. It is an immense responsibility to raise children at such a precarious time in our history on an uncertain Earth; to protect and prepare young lives for a world that looks so very different than we may want it to. And yet there is beauty in this experience–beauty and pain. We hope that this duality shines through in the collages, poems, and letters submitted here to you. We pass them over with all four hands with gratitude for the opportunity you’ve given us to collaborate in a way that we may not have otherwise—to connect as mothers, as friends, and as sisters on an Earth that is mother to us all.