I am thinking of and studying June Jordan this week, who teaches me again and again that desire and rage can be, are, both vectors toward a better world. Who wrote the most piercing, precise vengeance and the most intimate, tender love.

Jordan wrote:

"I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies."

Look at that first "become," opening onto the blank field of the page, propelling the eye toward radical possibility. That final line, holding it steady—the condition of possibility that underpins the first.

"I was born a Black woman
and now
I am become a Palestinian
against the relentless laughter of evil
there is less and less living room
and where are my loved ones?"

The becoming from-with-into global solidarities, against imperialism, white supremacy.

"I am become," Jordan wrote. The profound, iterated present-s, presence that *always* held histories, visioned futures. The rigorous, generous present/ce of her work the way Rankine talks about the word "here," at once self-in-place and an offering of the self to another.

June Jordan's analysis was consistently, precisely calibrated against power: "If you make and keep my life horrible then, when I tell the truth, it will be a horrible truth; it will not sound good or look good or, God willing, feel good to you, either."

Tonight, I am listening to this again. Thank you, @prisonculture, for calling it up.