Danez Smith: She’s the villain in the new videogame Animal Double Crossing, Franny Choi!

Franny Choi: And their abolitious definition make them boys go woke-o, Danez Smith!

Danez Smith: And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Franny Choi: Hi, Danez.

Danez Smith: Hey, Franny! You look so cute.

Franny Choi: Oh, in my pajamas…

Danez Smith: Yeah!

Franny Choi: … in my purple pajama state.

Danez Smith: Yeah. You know, I’ve been trying to appreciate everybody’s home fashions. Home-fits.

Franny Choi: Ooo.

Danez Smith: You know?

Franny Choi: House-fits?

Danez Smith: House-fits!

Franny Choi: Infits?

Danez Smith: Ooo! Infits.

Franny Choi: Like outfits, but infits.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Infits. Infits. Which is what I also call when I just have a tantrum on the inside.

Franny Choi: Right, right! (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Internally.

Franny Choi: Just cry and scream on the inside and then go about your day.

Danez Smith: Yeah, yeah. That’s also an infit, yeah.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: You know, little infits. Like my grandma’s been looking kinda cute when I go see her.

Franny Choi: Aww.

Danez Smith: She’s gotten tired of the muumus, and she’s putting on slightly nicer house dresses. So I’m like, okay, look at everybody being cute and distanced, you know?

Franny Choi: Yes.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: What has been your top house-fit so far? Best outfit, best dressed for the house? For the couch. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Okay. Well, the most common is dangerous. It’s me looking at a T-shirt and saying, “Scissors would help that.” Um … (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I have noticed—did you take this tank top that you’re currently wearing and cut it into a crop top?

Danez Smith: Yeah! It’s a famous—I love this tank top, and then, I looked at it one day, and I said, “Scissors would help that.” And I made it into a tank... This is what happens every summer, is that I leave with no shirts and only crop tops. I always like looking like I’m dressed for all situations. Like, if a lover comes out of nowhere, I look cute enough, or if like …

Franny Choi: If a lover comes out nowhere?

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: We live different lives.

Danez Smith: You never know when someone’s gonna knock on your door and have the wrong address, and that’s your soulmate. And so you want to be dressed for that, and for comfort, and for cleaning, and for running to the store real quick. And so, it’s always like, a long-sleeved crop top with shorts that are technically underwear. And that has been my best infit. Because it always just makes me feel like I’m wearing my boyfriend’s shirt, even though I’m the one who purchased it from Forever 21.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Right, right, right, right right.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I’m my own boyfriend. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I am my own boyfriend—

Franny Choi: And I’m wearing his shirt.

Danez Smith: Yeah. And I got my little panties, you know, and I’m just like, I always feel ready for my own little fantasy when I’m wearing that.

Franny Choi: Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s like, very Flashdance.

Danez Smith: Yeah, it’s like, who… what girl are you when you been home, you know? So what have you been wearing?

Franny Choi: Well I feel like I’ve been taking some liberty with mixing patterns, which has been nice, you know, because I’ve just been like, nobody’s gonna see me, let me see if it’s nice to wear these very colorful ’90s patterned shorts with this like graphic tee. And the answer is usually like, “No, it does not really work.” (LAUGHS) But like every time I walk past the mirror, I get to point at myself and go, “Heh, heh, heh, you tried.” You know? So that’s nice.

Danez Smith: Have you had any happy accidents? Like, have any infits turned into possible outfits?

Franny Choi: Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. You know, I feel like it’s part of my craft to like, give myself some space to experiment.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: You know, to like, try to find the outer limits of what I’m … etcetera.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, you know. I’ve tried—I did a reading where I had one of those shirts where you just button the top button and let it all flap down, like it’s a cape- like your shirt is a cape. But I also have been sewing some of my own clothes. You know, I think probably my best infits have been this skirt that I made and these pants that I made. I’ve been making some lounging clothing. So, yeah.

Danez Smith: I love all your lounging. And I love your cape. You deserve a cape, and you know who else deserves a frickin’ cape? Aurielle Marie deserves a cape. 

Franny Choi: Very good point. A seamless transition to an extremely good point, Danez Smith. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Thank you. Thank you. Four seasons of transitions in this bitch.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: But no, we got to talk to Aurielle Marie, and I first saw Aurielle as a youth poet at BNV many moons ago. And they were part of a resurgence of the Atlanta team that was like, really refreshing. And I remember them doing poems that I was just like,
“These kids are like doing poems that make me blush and are also really good, and who paid these like, 27-year-olds to look small?”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And it’s been so fun to watch Aurielle crystallize into this person where from everywhere they stand from, from their art, from their activism, it still has that brash spirit, that embrace of the body, that care and that ferocity that fights for her people. Aurielle is just one of my favorite poets. They’re the best. I don’t know, I look at Aurielle and I just feel peace, you know?

Franny Choi: Aw, how beautiful.

Danez Smith: Yeah, I feel peace and hope. Aurielle Marie is an essayist, poet, and activist hailing from the Deep South. She received invitations to fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA Voices, and Tin House. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The Guardian, Allure magazine, Adroit Journal, Vinyl Poetry, Triquarterly, and BOAAT. She is the 2019 winner of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award in Poetry and a Lambda Literary Emerging Writer-in-Residence. Aurielle writes and speaks about Blackness, bodies, pleasure, and pop culture from a Black feminist lens. Follow her @YesAurielle. Y’all, we are so excited to get into this interview with Aurielle. Let’s get into it. She will start us off with a poem.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Aurielle Marie:

(READS POEM)

pantoum for aiyana jones, & not a hashtag in sight

look!

there go a Black girl

body still tethered

to her head

there go a Black girl, shirt still dry

no river of marrow or tears flowing

from her head, no bile

following her up the block

Can we call her into form? not a river of marrow and small tears

of sweaty fabric, but manna and honeysuckle

from her head not bile, but beatniks in

bloom. Can we celebrate the child on this side of the grass?

her sweat fabric, honeyed and unmanned

the girl young, a fresh world of gardenia

blooming. Can’t we celebrate? The child’s on this side of the grass!

Open a window and usher in a new god! Like a breeze

gardenia-young, the girl a world made fresh.

in her hands piano keys, sticks of cinnamon gum,

a window into the novel. God, like an usher opening

a psalm, free to be the thing she was truly made of:

piano keys. In her hands, cinnamon sticks like guns

in the wrong light. Never mind that. Today she lives.

A thing to be freed. Made of psalms, and truly

holy. The girl will turn flowers into wine. Spills herself no more

wrong. And today, she lives. Never mind the light

like a summer halo offering. it is a myth, that we die, anyway. We too

holy. No more spills, no more flowers. From wine, girl churns herself a will.

Rises from the concrete, her arms full of clove. Her mother’s yard her throne.

Anyway, the myth is that we die. We too, summer. We offer halos

like birds on our shoulders. The girl, gardenia, and we planted her

full of clove and her mother. She raises a throne from the concrete, a yard of arms.

The girl, a god king. The girl, a map of good things. The girl, a young worth trending, after all. Just

look!

* * *

Franny Choi: Aurielle, oh my goodness.

Aurielle Marie: Hey.

Franny Choi: Thank you for that poem. Oy.

Aurielle Marie: Thank you. Thank you. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: You know what’s amazing about that poem? One thing that I could not stop thinking about was the way a pantoum often makes me feel like I’m stuck in time, like, stuck in a situation. But that one was just … just moved us through and progressed into like, a more and more free vision. I don’t know, I’m just Im like-I’m like- blown away. I’m blown away by that poem. Thank you so much for reading that poem to us.

Aurielle Marie: Thank you.

Danez Smith: I’ve been thinking about Aiyana just as we been out here hollering Breonna Taylor’s name too. And what it means, you know, for these Black girls to get killed in their own homes. And I’m really appreciative of that poem right now, because I’m thinking about how we lose the joy of people’s lives when we mourn them, right? Or the joyful possibility of their name, which I think that poem really gets to, right? I was so moved one day—I haven’t been on Twitter for a little minute now, but before I got off of there, there were shared pics of Breonna Taylor like just being herself, you know? And she was a goofy one, you know?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Danez Smith: She looked like, you know, just a girl! Like, you know, she was down for the outfit, she was down for the holiday party, she was down for whatever, she was down to have a good—

Aurielle Marie: Yes, yes.

Danez Smith: So, I guess I’m just amen’ing your poem once again for having those moments of when we forget folks wanna forget to mourn and fight for the Black women out here, too. And for the Black femmes. But uhm, how that poem not only finds Aiyana, but also builds a little bit of happy for her, is necessary. So thank you for that.

Franny Choi: There’s a line in “summer, somewhere”—Danez, what’s the line that’s like, “Here, the world loves—” or “do you know what it’s like for” …

Danez Smith: Oh, “do you know what it’s like to live someplace that loves you back?”

Aurielle Marie: Mmm. Mmm.

Franny Choi: Yeah. I don’t know, I think that it’s also like, what is it like to build poems for people that love them back. Where you know, the environment of the poem also loves them back, too.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. I think, especially now, I’m so interested in complicating what-what justice means. You know, as someone who’s not just a writer, but also someone who’s like, you know, sometimes often thinking about things while on the ground … a friend of mine and I were talking about justice, you know, in its most ethical and beautiful and radical sense, can it be attained for people who have been killed by the state? You know, justice for Breonna Taylor really means that we would live in a world that is dependent upon her living. And staying alive and thriving. And-and these sort of movements that are happening in the wake of their untimely deaths at the hands of the state, can we achieve justice after we’ve lost them? And I think in that poem, I’m trying to—if Aiyana Stanley-Jones’s name had to trend in a world that was actually filled with justice, lik why? It would just be because she’s beautiful. It would just be because she’s a little girl who had a snaggle tooth smile, and was.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aurielle Marie: I want that to be enough. I want us to trend because we bomb. (LAUGHS) And cute as hell. And precious.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: (LETS OUT AIR)

Danez Smith: So is that a type of spiritual justice that maybe the poem is seeking, that, you know, if Aurielle in the streets can’t pull down an immediate or tangible justice right away, then Aurielle the poet can strike up some type of spiritual surreal justice in the space of what the poem do?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah, I think poeming and organizing are both striving for the same thing. They’re trying to imagine and realize a world more radical and more free than the one we’re in. At least my poems and my organizing. And so, yeah, if I’m out there and if I’m in our communities and I can’t bring home the W, I can’t quite yet get my hands around the thing we call justice, then I can write toward it. At least for now. And hope that, you know, the poems reach that place first, or the labor in our communities reaches that place first. For sure.

Franny Choi: Aurielle, what is moving you these days?

Aurielle Marie: I think I’ve had to uhm … in this time of gathering and burrowing (LAUGHS), I think I’ve had to find smaller and smaller expressions of joy. Uhm, because for me, I’m, I mean if you say, “Aurielle, what brings you joy?”, I’m gonna say, “A good outfit, a bomb application of makeup, and sharing that good outfit and cute look out in the world with my homies, doing something cute.” And we can’t be out in the world with our homies in the same way right now. So I’ve had to just like, find the most minute parts of that. And I think what’s moving me is all of the ways that I’m—and other people are—finding small and expansive joy in this time of restriction. And for me, I mean, maybe I do put on an incredibly decadent outfit and a full face of makeup to sit on my couch and eat popcorn and watch Netflix.

Franny Choi: Oh, absolutely.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS) And sometimes it makes me feel both wildly ridiculous and wholly, wholly sane at the same time. And also, maybe it’s just like, you know, if I can’t go play in a park or go and do things outside, if I can just like, get some dirt under my nails with my plants. I’m becoming a plant lady. And how all of those things are uhm… expansive inside of restriction, and what’s possible when you look for places to expand that are new or different. And maybe not making a poem out of it, but poeming in it.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: What does poeming look like divorced from the page? How do you know when you’re poeming in an experience?

Franny Choi: Ooo.

Aurielle Marie: I think I had such a strange and difficult, at times, and marvelously particular experience writing my first manuscript, that, because I was working so hard to try to do the thing on the page, I got really super obsessed with the perfect poem, or the perfect iteration of a poem. Just because I wanted to say so much and say it so perfectly. In the last, I don’t know, year or so, ever since I walked away from the book deal, I’ve just been like, okay, well, what happens in the ‘just is’. And I think it was you, Danez, who told me like, you know, poem writing is more than just what happens when you sit down to edit. And when you sit down to try and make a thing more … mo’ better. (LAUGHS) And so I’m honoring all of the lounging around for three days and not completing anything on my to-do list as a part of the poeming. And maybe that’s a part of my radical praxis, too, of like, being Black and in the world. Maybe it’s also like, you know, it’s July 2020 and it feels like a dumpster fire outside, and so I am—this moment is protected and precious. And maybe it’ll be a poem later. But right now, it just is.

Danez Smith: Yeah, you kinda know you’re within the poem, right? In a way?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Because I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been, especially, you know, with stuff going on in Minneapolis, the one—I don’t know what the poem is, but I know it’s called “There Was No Poetry.” That’s all- like every time I sit down to write—

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

Danez Smith: —that’s the only thing I come back to. And it feels more like—I like what you’re saying about sort of the experience itself being the poem, right? Because I do feel—and I don’t know if this is what you’re saying, but I kinda feel like I’m in this moment where I’m foraging the moment.

Aurielle Marie: Yes.

Danez Smith: Foraging through the experience, still trying to collect … because I know it’ll happen one day. You know? So now, I’m like, okay now my job is to be here and collect.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Danez Smith: So that way, one day, I can sit down … and that, too, is part of poeming, part of the process, you know?

Aurielle Marie: And I see so many of my friends being super articulate about what’s going on, and writing these really beautiful things. Essays … I’ve got a friend, Da’Shaun Harrison, who is just brilliant and is able to sort of pull from the ether these big and juicy ideas, and write them so beautifully. And I’m just like … okay, and I’m on the couch. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I was working bail support for three days, and now I can do nothing. And I think, you know, 2019 Elle, who wanted to write the perfect poem and perfectly edit would be like, “Um, we have things to write, because have things to say.” And right now, I’m just like, okay, maybe, but it’ll happen when it happens, and it’s not gonna happen while I’m watching “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”- it’s not.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Yeah. I mean, in the context of the America in which we live, in some ways isn’t like being nonproductive like, nonuseful to the mechanisms of America, I don’t think that it’s totally hyperbolic to say that’s like a resistive act, you know? Or it makes me think of the line of that Auden poem, “Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives.”

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: And what does it mean to kind of embody that spirit in the way we move as poets, too. Sometimes we make nothing happen and we’re just surviving. And I think that’s incredibly powerful, too, given the stakes. You know?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Yeah.

Franny Choi: It also makes me think of like, in The Handmaid’s Tale, in the book, there are all these moments where like, the protagonist in that book is not really like a hero, you know? She’s really just trying to survive in the tiniest and resist in the tiniest ways possible. For so much of that book, the way that resistance happens is that she like, looks at a flower for a little bit. Looks away from where she’s supposed to be looking. And looks at something beautiful and savors it, and then comes back, you know? I don’t know, I think that those small moments of finding joy in the senses, in some ways that’s some of the most powerful resistance that we can do, I think. I know that I sound like a woo-woo white woman right now.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I know it.

Aurielle Marie: No! No!

Franny Choi: I recognize it.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But it’s how I- it’s who I- it’s a part of me. (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: No! I think what I was just thinking is like, that also is a very much—it leans on, even calls on, positionality, too and sort of like- I mean, in the same way that poetry does. The position of the writer is an important context for the poem that we’re being given, and I think it’s the same way with these moments of joy. These moments of resistance. I mean, maybe you know for a cisgendered, heterosexual, you know making the 200k to 600k bracket sort of thing of, you know, maybe that white guy, looking at a flower might not be in the face of state violence.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Maybe that’s not your resistance, boo. Maybe you got a little bit more toil.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aurielle Marie: (IN HIGH VOICE) A little more … A little bit more elbow grease from you. (LAUGHS) Cuz that flower is—

Danez Smith: You didn’t earn that flower.

Aurielle Marie: You didn’t earn your flower. But-but for other folks, who have been and are always in a more fricative position to the state—you know that’s my word, Danez. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Fricative!

Aurielle Marie: It’s one of my faves.

Danez Smith: It’s fun.

Aurielle Marie: It’s one of my faves.

Franny Choi: That one’s so good. Ooo.

Aurielle Marie: It’s like a little joy right there. Just the word itself. I feel like Ross Gay now. (LAUGHS) But yeah, who are in a more fricative position to the state, that flower is everything. That flower is theory and praxis. And looking at it for a moment instead of, you know, productivity. Instead of sacrificing time and capacity. That is the work. Yeah. For sure.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aurielle Marie: I’d love to look at a flower right now.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Go, you should! Go make sure you look at a flower. Because I’m glad you’re not writing, too. And we’re talking about— Franny, I don’t think you’re being too much of an old white woman, but I think—

Aurielle Marie: No.

Danez Smith: But I think there’s a power, too, even within the, you know, poetry industrial complex, of denying being the witness, or the witness that’s ready to respond, you know?

Aurielle Marie: Mm.

Danez Smith: I think about that every—

Franny Choi: Wait, what do you mean by that?

Danez Smith: I mean, I’m thinking about the submission calls that have came and that are to come. You know.

Franny Choi: Oh yeah.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Danez Smith: There is this … two months into coronavirus, it’s a journal checking—and it’s not always from some evil place. But it is sort of folks saying like, “Hey, poets, what have you thought about corona so far? Send us your poems.” You know? (LAUGHS) And there’s this pressure—

Aurielle Marie: Oh my god, yeah. Yeah.

Danez Smith: —I think we put on ourselves, that is like, I always have to be crystalizing the experience that I’m still swimming in. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Danez Smith: You know? When you might actually still be within the shit. And I think it also denies the power in supporting the writing of others, in a way, right? Where it’s just like … or maybe I feel power in that. In release from that question of knowing like, I actually don’t have to have all the poems for the moment right now, because somebody else does. And I trust that there’s enough writers in the world, and somebody is feeling that push and that urgency to get that work done. That is a kind of solidarity too, that like, somebody else is cataloguing while I get to step away and put my energy somewhere else. And also I’m gonna actually reject the idea that like, poets sort of speak up automatically. And I’m grateful for folks who can do that when they can, because that has also been me, read ysort of with that urgency of the poem in certain times. But not now. Not now. (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Aurielle, do you find that like the timeline is different between having to say something coherent in your work as an activist and an organizer versus like, having to say something as a poet, or like… because I feel like as folks who are involved in political organizing, often a thing happens, and the next day it’s like, press release, here’s how that thing relates to the campaign that we’re working on or something. I don’t know. Yeah. How are those worlds different?

Aurielle Marie: I think it depends. There are a lot of schools of thought and a lot of disciplines to pull from across the racial justice spectrum. And I think that I try to be where the people are. And so my hope as an organizer is to always respond with the criticality and the urgency that, you know, the folks most proximate to whatever state violence is at hand or whatever issue is at hand are asking for, are moving with. And sometimes that is overnight. (LAUGHS) You know? I’m thinking about when Rayshard Brooks was killed in Atlanta, and that night, people were at the Wendy’s. That night. And I had plans, right, I was supposed to be, you know, on the land, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, just kinda hanging out. And I, of course, took some time, took a couple hours to myself because we had been working so hard, and I was already so fatigued. And then also, we made the decision to come back a little early because it was time to go. Sometimes it’s just that rapid. And then sometimes, you know, I’m like, “Oh, this is—we should do this! This ordinance is about to be voted on in Atlanta city council. Let’s go do that.” And folks, you know, the community is like, “Well … ” And I’m like, “Okay, great, I can maybe sit on this for two months. It’s cool. Fine.” (LAUGHS) And I think with poems, it’s different because the engine is me.

Danez Smith: Mmm.

Aurielle Marie: The pressure I feel is internal, and that’s something that I have to check with myself. And that’s something I’m trying to unlearn, right? The sort of like machine of productivity and sort of trying to unlearn when I need to speak and when I need to be the one to say something, or to write toward something. If the poetic impulse is because I feel accountable to my folks or to the pen or the page, or if I feel afraid to not say something, or if I feel like I’ll be left behind, or I don’t know, something that doesn’t need my immediacy.

Franny Choi: Hm. You said accountability to the pen or the page, which I think is like … that’s super interesting. What does that mean to be accountable to the page?

Danez Smith: You mean like responsible to the craft?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Or to … I mean, to be honest about how I write, maybe I’m trying to figure out what my job is as a poet, and why do I want to write, and how do I want my work to live in the world. And does that intention, does that desire, require me to be saying something or writing something. And maybe that’s too egotistical, right, maybe I’m thinking too soon about my, I don’t know, not legacy, but my sort of like, bird’s eye view of my work as a writer. But I think of my writing as so married to my political work that I’m like, okay, well if I’m organizing about it, should I be writing about it? Do I get to sit down? Do I get to leave this idea alone? Can I circle back, or is it as urgent as it is for me to be out on the streets right now? Is the urgency the same? Maybe I am asking the same question that you are. Maybe I’m trying to answer it. But honestly, the question is, “Hmm, I’m thinking about that too.”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) For sure, for sure.

Aurielle Marie: If the urgency is the same and if the urgency that I feel and the accountability that I feel to my folks and to my community is the same urgency that I need to be responding to on the page.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aurielle Marie: I also, you know, just wanna say that I might say things that I disagree with as soon as this goes live. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: For sure.

Aurielle Marie: I’m chewing through all these big picture things and thinking about production and work and toil right now. So I’m just like, reading a lot and arguing in my head a lot, and arguing with friends a lot about the responsibility of a Black poet, the responsibility of a Black writer, and the responsibility of a Black organizer. And I feel like every day my mind is changing about what I’m actually responsible for, or what I’m actually excited about, versus what has been drilled into me, or what has been taught to me, or what discipline I’ve been trained under, and how to challenge and to trouble the water of those values in my work as a poet and in my writing. And I don’t know, I don’t know what I don’t know yet, so.

Danez Smith: Which things do you find yourself pushing up against, though?

Aurielle Marie: Hmm. I think I’m always bumped up against the form. And we’ve talked about-we’ve had long conversations, Danez, about my beef. I got beef with form.

Franny Choi: Hm.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: It seems like you like it. Imma say that. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I know, I was gonna say!

Aurielle Marie: And you know, for someone who started this thing off with a pantoum, you know? Yeah, I think about—and maybe it’s not form itself, but how form is taught most often. And for me, as someone who’s thinking critically all the time and maybe even a little annoyingly all the time about race theory and you know, academia, I’m like, well this is just another way to tell folks from outside academia how not to write, and what they can’t say. But form doesn’t have to be that, so maybe my beef with is actually how we are taught form in our poetic infancy. Because when Lobela Lovelace told me that something that I wrote the other day was a sonnet, I was like, “Bitch, you lyin’.” (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I was like, “You are lying.”

Danez Smith: There’s so many accident sonnets in the world, so.

Franny Choi: Wait, wait, was your reaction like, “Oh! Great. I accidentally wrote a sonnet.” Or was it like, “Fuck you, this isn’t a sonnet.” Like, fuck the sonnet.

Aurielle Marie: No, no. It was like, “I don’t write sonnets.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I refuse.

Franny Choi: Everybody writes sonnets.

Danez Smith: Right. No, literally—

Aurielle Marie: Yes, yes.

Danez Smith: I’m trying to find a way to put my eyes against the microphone so y’all can hear them roll.

Franny Choi and Aurielle Marie: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Because I’ve had Aurielle in several a workshops, and I feel like at some point, they have leaned across to me and said, “Ima write a crown.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Yeah …

Danez Smith: But I feel you, I feel you. I feel you having the beef with the pedagogy around form, though. Because I don’t think that we are sort of offered—especially what Black folks in the canon have offered to form, right? Some of the baddest ones up in there, doing formal things, and it is taught in this sort of, I don’t know if I wanna say everybody … I feel like if you’re really teaching form right, you’re teaching this controlled way to talk about the wildness and chaos that can happen in a poem, you know?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Yeah.

Danez Smith: If you’re doing it wrong, it feels stringent. You know, it feels wiped down and too bare, when it should feel kinda funky, you know? It should feel kinda dirty. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: And that bareness I think gets prioritized, maybe in some way, the way the pedagogy is applied. Like it feels like we shouldn’t be learning and applying form to contain and control that chaos. And I’m like, “Mmm that’s not gonna sound Black.” (LAUGHS) And of course my mind changes about form when I am introduced to it and sucked up into the world of Black poetics, and Brown poetics, because it gives me a school of thought that is embracing and inviting in the wild, and giving it a place to sort of like, marinate and really just grow fatty and thick and luscious, instead of like, putting the wild and chaos on a diet and being like, the diet is seven lines. And seven stanzas.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Which I just, you know, I just really can’t get down with. Yeah, I think it’s the battle of the pedagogies, and who we give permission to go out in search of the wild.

Franny Choi: Mm. I think that it’s such an amazing challenge to say, here’s an incredibly and restrictive place, be as wild as you can. Be as imaginative and luscious as you can. That feels like a lesson that one can apply to many different situations, you know?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Like, can you make the most incredible thing with the barest bones and most rules trying to constrict your freedom?

Aurielle Marie: Sounds very “of color” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right?

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah, here are limited resources—

Franny Choi: The worst part of—. Right.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right, here’s the worst part of the animal. Make the most delicious thing you can. You know?

Aurielle Marie: It’s like, mmm, oxtail, delicious.

Franny Choi: Incredibly delicious. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Incredibly so.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I hear some people like chitlins. Not myself, but um …

Aurielle Marie: I’m not gonna turn my face away from the plate if—

Danez Smith: No.

Aurielle Marie: If you made me a plate of chitlins.

Danez Smith: No. You know, and chitlins are like villanelles. I’ll try it. I’ll try it once.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I’ll try it. You gotta have the right sauce. Yeah, that is the villanelle. You have a good sauce …

Franny Choi: Chillanelle. I’m sorry.

Aurielle Marie: Chillanelle. Don’t be sorry.

Franny Choi: Thank you. (LAUGHS) Thank you, Aurielle.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But sometimes I think that I don’t actually need the encouragement to make terrible puns. But I appreciate it.

Aurielle Marie: Y’all got the wrong person in.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Like, yes, do that. Do it again.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Uhm. Cool. Where do we wanna go next?

Danez Smith: I’m wondering, maybe, if we could hop back. We were talking about what the poet self and the activist self learn from each other. I’m wondering how both of those inform how you move as a literary citizen, right? The thing about this current uprising and reckoning is that everybody can get it, right?

Aurielle Marie: Yes.

Danez Smith: From whatever angle, so it’s just like, we dismantling police brutality, and—

Aurielle Marie: Absolutely.

Danez Smith: Poetry Foundation, what’s up with them-you know what’s up with them résumés, you know, we need to shred it.

Aurielle Marie: What’s up with ’em. Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: And … you know, I think sometimes there is a beautiful and true and at other times conflated relationship between poetry and I guess being a good person. (LAUGHS) Being an activist and all that kinda stuff.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I don’t know, you are somebody who I look up to both on the page and in these streets. You know, you’re somebody that is quick and unquestioning to like, get to the good. (LAUGHS) No matter the venue that you’re moving in. So I guess I’m wondering how that helps you move throughout the pobiz, too. And what do you see as some necessary questions that the poetry community maybe needs to ask itself? In this critical moment where it seems like we have an opportunity to ask ourselves some hard questions and grow from them.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for all of those things. And also, I think, I don’t know who did it first, poet self and/or activist self me are ever in love with my own sense of audacity. And just like, I just so love that I ain’t scared of nobody.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: These hands poetically and activistally are ready to eat, for every single body. So as a writer, I think that that kind of is a cool, I don’t know, can audacity be a tool in poem? Sure. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh yeah.

Aurielle Marie: A cool tool to lean into. As a literary citizen, that audacity is employed by me just wanting to create spaces where Black poets and Brown poets can do what the fuck we want. My wanting to do the quarantine reading series was just because I was like, you know, Black poets and Brown poets are not making money right now. And sure there are other people not making money, but you know, we know statistically that these are the communities that are the most critically impacted, and guess what, white folks who have access to visibility and also money can create some exchanges here. And I also just wanted to see my friends read poems since I couldn’t do it in person. So, now we have a poetry series where poets at all different levels of their career are kinda coming together and reading, and also getting paid, because we deserve that. And…what was the other part of your question, Danez? I’m so wrapped up in the fact that you telling me that you love me me. And I’m like what did you say to me (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I think I was just asking … the second part actually was just like, what kind of questions do you think the poetry sort of … I don’t know, the poetry community—

Franny Choi: The poetry world.

Danez Smith: Yeah, the poetry world needs to ask itself right now at this critical juncture.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. I think one of the hugest questions that I charge any institution, any league of institutions to question is, where are we hoarding power, and how can that power be distributed? Who is restricted from this place where we hoard power, and how can we not only invite them in, because, I think that’s some flawed shit. To just hold power and to conduct power and choreograph it in a specific way and then invite people that have been restricted to come in and partake with you. I think that’s wild. What is more valuable to me is where and how and how quickly can I cede power and return the resources that I have utilized and benefitted from and the funds that have come with those resources, those creative resources, to not only their rightful owners, but to the communities who I owe. And I think a lot of organizations get to the first question, which is, where is the power? And then they stop at, can I invite people in. And not can I exit this place—

Danez Smith: Can I share my power without relinquishing it. Right.

Aurielle Marie: Right, right. And you can’t. Especially when you are a part of a community or an institution that has benefitted. And if you’re in the US. If you’ve benefitted from anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, anti-Brownness, and the systems that thrive on those three things. Then you can’t—it’s not possible to share power, and it still be, you know, for you and for these communities that you have manipulated and benefitted from. There are so many organizations, so many places right now that are having these huge shifts because I think people are demanding that folks make good on this promise of equity. And the promise of equity means that the power that benefitted at the expense of Black and Brown people is returned to them. And that also means the Poetry Foundation. That also means- you know, I think we think so often that poetry is a squeaky clean, beautiful, inherently social justice thing, and it’s not.

Franny Choi: Oh my god, no. (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: It’s not. (LAUGHS) And I think that there’s something about—maybe it’s because it’s liberal arts, I don’t know— that we’re just like, well we’re in this place, and because we’re engaging in poetry, we’re doing the thing. And no, poetry is not the praxis. The praxis is in the literary institutions, it’s in the literary spaces. Who’s being invited to lead them, who’s being invited to critique them. All of that is the praxis of power and of inequity. And, cede that shit. Give it over. Give it up, and be free.

Franny Choi: Right, yeah. I mean, it’s not just the content of the poems themselves. It’s not just like, writing anti-racist poems, it’s like, fighting to make sure that all of the structures that put that poem into the hands of people are anti-racist in their structures.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Aurielle Marie: Right. And it’s even like, I’m thinking about the prestige of journals that, you know, are prestigious partly because they’re not accessible. And how that’s—you know, I’m thinking about who gets invited to be an employee, who gets to teach poetry and poetics. And just so many places where folks who are in positions of power, especially white folks in this current political moment, have to ask themselves that troubling question, which is, “Where am I or the institution I’m a part of hoarding power, and where can we cede that?” And I think the largest responsibility in social movements is to reveal to those who are in power or to demand of those in power where that hoarding is happening and how they can turn it over. Which, I think is, you know, part of … the letter that the Poetry Foundation got, it’s people in Minneapolis burnin’ up a police station, baby.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS) And so many places where I think the belief is that if you can’t see where you’re hoarding power, or if you refuse to see, more appropriately, and if you won’t turn it over, then let me help you see. Let me show you. I’ll hold your hand.

Franny Choi: It’s true that it seems like so often, it seems just hard to see when you’re hoarding power, you knowe like for those who are. I don’t know, this is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. So often the people who are hoarding power need help understanding. And I’ve run into this in the situations in which it turned out I was hoarding power, and I was like, “Wait, wait, wait, I’m just here trying to be part of the team, I’m just like, in the group,” but it turned out that I was holding onto something, and needed other people to see it. Why is it so hard? What is it that keeps people from understanding the power that they have? This is a huge question. I’m sorry. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I mean, if all you’ve ever had was power, it doesn’t feel strange to have it, you know. And if you had barriers to power, shit it feels good to then have it, right? And so— (LAUGHS) even a little bit of it.

Franny Choi: My god, yeah.

Danez Smith: And you know, I think folks who don’t have power are really better at questioning it at some point, earlier in that process, right? With the wee bit of power you might have. I think also a thing that we like to do, and I think a lot of Americans do this, where we identify down. So the second you actually get a little bit of power, the finish line just moves. And so now, you’re line for too much keeps on getting further and further ahead of you the more that you amass. As long as there’s sort of the imaginative somebody else who has more. Right?

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah, and I think especially if there isn’t an intentional sort of reckoning with what the end goal is, then it’s like, oh, I just, I want more of what you have. I don’t think that that’s gonna lead to anybody being free, is getting more of what is over there. I think as we challenge folks who are hoarding power, I think that the dispersal of that power is essential to liberation, freedom, equity and you know, justice for all. Because then we’re just kind of like, forever shifting little hoards, right?

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aurielle Marie: Forever just changing the hands of who has the power the destroy or malign another community. So yeah, I think you’re right, Danez, that you know, based on the social and cultural norm that we have now, once you get a little bit it’s like, oh, and now I want more of what you got. Or now I want … you still have more than me. But you know, let me be quiet before somebody call me a socialist and try to, you know, come for me on Twitter.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: No, you’re right. You know, cuz the dangerous question is, asking yourself like, you can’t frame it as, as long as I the individual have a little bit more of what I’m not supposed to have, then we’re all doing alright.

Aurielle Marie: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: You know, the questions to ask are really hard questions, because they’re not about easy shifts, right. They’re about complete radical things. Like, how do I imagine legit something new, right?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Because me succeeding in this—

Aurielle Marie: Yes, yes.

Danez Smith: —system does not actually change the system that we decided was fucked up. Or that we know is fucked up, you know? I don’t actually want to win here, I actually just wanna focus on getting some other shit going. (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. And that’s how poeming and organizing are, for me, two parts of a same thing. In that poems and the work of grassroots organizers are both trying to imagine something impossible to conceive right now where we are. Because I don’t know what freedom is, I just know what it isn’t. And this poem is trying to create a material and sensorial place for a thing that I don’t have, that I don’t know, and that I don’t maybe even understand. And in that way, are both doing the work of creating little free bubbles for other wilder and more ridiculous and necessary things to be imagined and become possible. And maybe now I sound like the granola crunchy white woman. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: No. You do not! You do not sound like the granola crunchy white woman. You sound like emergent strategy and the future of organizing and speculative—

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: You sound like a visionary organizer. (LAUGHS) Which it seems like you are.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Thank you. I was talking with some friends of mine, brilliant writers, brilliant organizers, my god. I just don’t even know how I am blessed enough to be friends with Hunter Ashleigh Shackelford and Da’Shaun Harrison and other really dope people. And we were talking about like, is organizing itself gonna get us free, is writing gonna get us free, or is just the modality that we are using because it’s what we know right now. And we were thinking about that because of John Lewis passing, and how, you know, his legacy is a lot of things for many different people. And folks who are organizing in this time period have a hard time relating to and having relationships with folks who were organizing in the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s because what was possible and what was necessary then doesn’t feel absolute to us now. And I had to realize that, you know, my critiques of you know wanting a seat at the table are only possible because somewhere somehow, due to the toil of someone else, we have seen what it looks like to sit at the table.

Franny Choi: Mmm.

Aurielle Marie: So because of that, I am, in some way maybe indebted to that work and also not separate from it. So am I just a poet because, I don’t know, we haven’t figured out the like, holographic (LAUGHS) ridiculousness that’s coming up ahead? And does the sort of mode of my poem only exist—now I’m just, okay, maybe I don’t agree with myself now. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But I think that that’s why it’s so important for us to be imagining the most audacious thing that we can.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah.

Franny Choi: So that the next generation can have a chance at finding something truly wild, you know?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. I was in a poetry class with some high school students and this young person just wrote a poem that was just like, color. It was just different colors. There was no word in there that wasn’t a color. And I was like, “Girl, what did you write?”

Franny Choi: Oof.

Aurielle Marie: Also …

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) This could be genius, or … (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right. This either isn’t a poem or it’s the best poem I’ve ever read. (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I feel like young people do that to us a lot. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god, totally.

Aurielle Marie: But I was like, “Oh yeah, your mode makes sense to you. And cool. And you read a little Audre Lorde, a little June, so you’re like, ‘Well, I know what’s next.’” And I’m like, “Do you? …”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: She knows why that caged bird sings… you know what I’m sayin’? Look …

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Yeah, that caged bird sang.

Danez Smith: And it sings about colors.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Red mauve pink pink.

Aurielle Marie: Chartreuse periwinkle.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: Periwinkle? Periwinkle.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I was like … (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Kinda love it, not gonna lie.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah, I was like, you freer than me.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: You freer than me! I’m jealous.

Danez Smith: So Aurielle, you had mentioned it kinda briefly earlier in the conversation, but you had a book deal previously that you walked away from. And I just wanna say, sort of as friend, big homie, I was very proud of you for how you handled that. Just because I think it’s a move that a lot of poets would be scared to make, just because of how we hold the first book. And I think presses can sort of use that a lot of times to abuse poets sometimes. Or writers. So as much as you want to, would you be down to tell us about your experience with that situation and what you learned from it?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. I think it lands a lot on—this is what I was thinking about when you asked me that question about if the poet self is teaching the organizer self something. Because the organizer self had to … I had to have a real nigga talk with myself about where I was compromising on my values as an organizer, as a person, because of my fears or my desires as a literary citizen who wants to be a poet taken seriously in the world. Yeah, I won a book prize. I was super excited. I was very much in disbelief. And it was one of the very first things I had ever won on my own poetic merit. And I got the first contract. And I remember talking with so many of my friends who had book deals, had a couple. Danez, I think we talked too, and I was like, “Is this … what should I be looking for? What do I do?” Because something doesn’t feel right. And there were just so many things that as a young, Black writer who was just kinda getting her feet wet, who hadn’t been a part of other—like, an MFA program or anything like that, I was just like, there’s so much I don’t know. And there were just so many things missing that should’ve been included in the contract. So I said no. And maybe a year passes, and the same press approached me with a better contract with things that I had asked for, that they were like, “Naw, we ain’t giving you that,” it had. So I was like, “Okay, let’s move forward. Let’s do this. I feel better.” But the process was so heartbreakingly clear that I was a writer … a Black, queer writer writing a book for Black, queer femmes and girlx with an x, and this publisher —

Franny Choi: Oh my god...

Aurielle Marie: —not only didn’t have experience with Black writers, but had no value system, had no value system that accounted for Black writers. I mean, I remember getting a couple of covers after we had gone through a very strange editing process where things like my diction and stuff were kind of being called-edited and called into question, where I got a cover that was red, black, and green like a watermelon, and I was like, “No … ” And then I got another cover with like, Trump’s head exploding over my name—

Franny Choi: Wait, what?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Yeah! And I was like, “No …” (LAUGHS) When you think about, when we were talking about institutional power, I was so afraid of sticking up for myself, and I was so afraid of being denied this thing that I thought you needed to be a serious, serious poet, which was a book. I mean, thank god I had friends who were like, “You are bomb, and you don’t need this thing.” I mean, that is how power works, right, you’re just … you feel like whoever is in that sort of authoritative role, whatever they say is appropriate. There’s just such an overwhelming amount of influence that they have over even how you think about yourself or how you see what’s possible.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aurielle Marie: And little organizer me was like, now if this had been a nonprofit, if this had been a—

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Right.

Aurielle Marie: —somebody at an educational institution, if this was any other place where I was sure of my worth and my value, I woulda been just (LAUGHS) not even … it would never have gone this far. But I was just … I was so sad, and just so … I just wanted, like you said, Danez, so much importance put on the first book. And with that, sort of the legitimacy that we give people who have access to being published. And I had to walk away from it. I had to trust my writing, I had to trust myself, I had to trust my niggas, my community, who was like, “Yeah, it’s gonna be okay.” Because I was like, “It’s not, though.” (LAUGHS) “I am never gonna write again.” And just in my mirror, being like—you know how Issa Rae be talking to herself?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: I had to do it. I had a good week straight where it was just, “Good morning, me, you’re a bad bitch, and you can send this email today,” before I was really able to send the email. Unfortunately, I mean, my email wasn’t like, “I’m out this bitch.” My email was “Hey, this is what I deserve. This is what writers who are putting out a first book deserve. Can we-can we make some amends?”

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aurielle Marie: And they were like, “What we’re gonna do is let you out of the book contract instead of giving you the things.” The reasonable things you asked for. And I think that that’s … of course a part of this whole conversation. And I think that, you know, the responsibility is on folks at institutions like that to make sure that they are … you know, who are we bringing in, and how do we let folks who we’re bringing in, who are, especially when they’re Black and Brown folks, LGBTQ folks, right, how do we shift the business as usual in the institution to make sure that their value is uniquely recognized.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Aurielle, I just wanna say like, all of that is 1,000 and 500 percent their loss. You know what I mean? All I think this means is that the world is now open for your poems to bless the next press that will have the vision and fortitude to give you the space that you deserve, you know what I mean?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: That’s complete, 100 percent their loss.

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Thank you. And also, I think, you know, I just think that I want … it has taught me and helped me understand that I want to be able to remind poets that we get to live out our work, and allow our work in spaces that affirm and double down on things that we believe in.

Franny Choi: Yes.

Aurielle Marie: And it’s a part of all of this, you know, small and large iterations of resistance, too, that you know, if there’s a journal that is not upholding the values or if there’s a place that wants to publish my work that doesn’t live out the things that are important to me, I can … it’s okay for me to say … and maybe even important and necessary for me to say no, so that there’s that much more pressure for any—you know, Aurielle’s one little baby person, but if folks are choosing spaces based on what we believe and what we affirm and what we want to see in the world, then it shifts who are the decision makers of the culture, of the literary terrain.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: So now we’ve come to a little segment we like to call Fast Punch. We are poets and we could’ve named this anything, but we called it Fast Punch.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And in Fast Punch, Aurielle, we are gonna give you 10 categories, and you are going to tell us—well, you get a choice. You can either be a pessimist or an optimist. So you can tell us the 10 best things in those categories or the 10 worst things in that category. It’ll be like, food toppings or like, poetic forms. So you wanna do the best or the worst of stuff today?

Aurielle Marie: Let’s do the best of stuff. We talked about so much of the worst of our world. Let’s do the best.

Franny Choi: Great.

Danez Smith: Alright, I love it. Alright, Aurielle, I want you to tell me the best place to read.

(CLOCK TICKS)

Aurielle Marie: Mmm… In the bathtub.

Franny Choi: Best popsicle flavor.

Aurielle Marie: Oh my god. Um … watermelon? Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Best thing with cheese.

Aurielle Marie: Ooo … itself. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Best US city to spend a weekend in.

Aurielle Marie: New Orleans?

Franny Choi: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Best weather phenomena in a poem?

Aurielle Marie: Mmm … tornado.

Franny Choi: Ooo. Best girl or boy band.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS) The Cheetah Girls.

Franny Choi: Amazing!

Danez Smith: Best line you wish you’d written.

Aurielle Marie: Oh man, can I go read it? Wait …

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: This is the behind the scenes, poets grabbing from their libraries, live on the podcast. I love this at-home version. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: “don’t save me, i don’t wanna be saved. / i’ve died laughing before, been seen / god’s face & you have her teeth, my nig.”

Danez Smith: Aww. I love you.

Aurielle Marie: (CACKLES)

Franny Choi: Okay, last one is best protest chant.

Aurielle Marie: Hmm … (SINGS) Ella Baker was a freedom fighter and she taught me how to fight, say what? We gon’ fight all day and night until we get it right. Which side are you on my people, which side are you on? We on the freedom side!

(TIMER DINGS)

Franny Choi: Amazing. Amazing!

Danez Smith: Wow.

Franny Choi: Aurielle, that was so great. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Wow look our for the rap career- that was great.

Aurielle Marie: Thank you. I’m coming for you.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Okay, so now we are going to play This vs. That, which is a game we play every episode of the show, where we’ll put two things, concepts, metaphysical objects in two different corners, and you have to tell us which would win in a fight. So, for this round of This vs. That, we have in this corner, form, and in that corner, we have, protest. Which would win in a fight?

(BELL RINGS)

Franny Choi: Ding, ding, ding! I don’t know what I mean by that.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS) I think, wow, okay, so the form we’ve already discovered today, is contained and wild. It’s containing wildness and chaos. And the protest is wildness and chaos, but it also is—

Danez Smith: But it is organized, you know?

Aurielle Marie: —It’s unexpected too —It’s organized, yeah.

Franny Choi: It’s organized!

Aurielle Marie: It’s organized. Oh my god, is it allowed that the things in opposite corners morph into a Crystal Gem?

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Well … I love it. They touch and become one?

Aurielle Marie: They touch and become one because they’re like, “We’re the same! We’re gonna power up and body these bitches.”

Danez Smith: Wow.

Franny Choi and Aurielle Marie: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Wow, they just become a Crystal Gem of your poetics.

Aurielle Marie: Yes.

Franny Choi: Great.

Aurielle Marie: They’re just like, “Is it Aurielle?”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aurielle Marie: No, okay, if there is a winner, I’ve gotta ride for my team. I really feel like the protest will win, but just only because the form has set rules that you can trouble. But the protest is endless. It’s gonna do what it wants, and also, its rules are an ever-evolving strategy, so.

Danez Smith: Wow.

Aurielle Marie: You don’t know what’s happening next.

Franny Choi: That’s such a beautiful answer. And I also love the version of the answer where you say, “Oh, in This vs. That, I win.” (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Aurielle Marie: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And it’s very Crystal Gems, too, though, that like what you walk away from the fight with is self-confidence and a new friend and togetherness.

Aurielle Marie: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Franny Choi: Aww.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Very Steven Universe.

Aurielle Marie: Walk away with a lesson. A lesson and a song in your heart.

Danez Smith: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Aw. So good. Aurielle, thank you so much for spending this hour with us. Where can people find more of your work?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah, I can be found ranting about things and taking strange pictures on Twitter and Instagram @yesaurielle. And then, you know, of course, my list of published places, and if you wanna learn more about things that are happening in the future, you can of course go to auriellemarie.com. Yeah, I’m super excited about some projects that I’m working on in the next couple months, so, stay tuned.

Franny Choi: Amazing. Thank you so much. Will you close us out with a poem?

Aurielle Marie: Yeah. Thank you, Franny and Danez so much for having me and having this conversation about all the things I love. It’s been fun.

Franny Choi: Yay.

Aurielle Marie:

(READS POEM)

at the pussy march, the women were bitches

my bitches marched, some without pussies

some of my bitches, ain't. just like that

i, she-bitch, birthed megaphones

the women held their purses in the downbend

of their mouths- away from us, they kept their children & the keys to the city their pussies fists, closed & their backs turned, refusing to meet our eyes.

all the names they shouted

\Vere our names.

all the gxrls they chanted was our gxrls:

Mercedes Successful, Atattiana, Mya, Sandra, Ayana Stanley's sweet

seven year old body, Rekia Boyd and her skull-hole, Tanisha, Shelley

Frey. Alexia Christian, her hands with more wounds than a certain

messiah. Natasha McKenna, Tarika Wilson, Kayla Moore, Malissa

Williams, Miriam Carey, we sang Shantel Davis like an aria, and

Kendra James too. Duanna Johnson's we whispered like a secret and

oh, our gxrls our gxrls our gxrls. our gxrls our gxrls our gxrls ours

ours. ours ours.

despite them singing our names like war songs they treated us like paupers their money, our blood. they knit and we bled. they chanted and our bodies

stretched for miles,

foot by hand

///

I ain't said it yet

But the mouth is a scythe

 I ain't gon tell you how

But I break

What English cain't ever repair

Into a slice a thunder

I be's myself, den I be's

A net of small blade

///

1. I have only my two hands

bloodied into their raw

marrow my hands, mirror-hands

stethoscopes, suture hands

imparticular structures

I am broken! And praise, my

sisters have broken me open!

1. for us there is no wrong cure

just these hands hold the bodies

we own, our mouths ironsmiths

melding us a world of glass

and bone and sassafrass

and then of course the boat to reach it

my sisters who break me open!

///

Born spineshudder

Born wild

Born dead

The black gxrl

Born bulletscissor

Born throatthread

Sinspun

She ain't

black gxrl

is, but in fact

Deadgrout

is ghoulgrit

is iron butter

oakstain

and unhung

Is four years old.

///

[Is too young for the dead

Is too live for the now

& this is how I know

My sisters cherish me into

The deep deep ]

///

I cannot get

out of bed

///

And still the crows are outside my window

cloud-bruised & tryna find something

for my hand to ruin after the call

you ain’t never supposed to get and I got twice I am

a bible filled with stories of sacrifice & no

salvation

///

and my sisters still hold me sun sap

still hold me syrup slick

sinner salve

honey child

snake blood

young liquor

new drunk

and child whiskey

and child whiskey too

///

and this is a freedom song,

and this too a freedom song

I know not why a caged thing

would ever say my name. This here is a freedom song.

I know not why a caged thing

would freedom song me

This here a freedom

this here freedom

This here a freedom song

and I know not why

and I know not why

I know not a caged thing

I know not my name

* * *

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: Wow.

Franny Choi: That was Aurielle.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) That was Aurielle.

Franny Choi: That last poem really just blew me away. It blew me into a thousand pieces. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah, Aurielle is just like, really special, I don’t know. There’s a blessedness to it, to the clarity of thought and spirit and like, you know, everything.

Franny Choi: I also especially really grateful for the things that they were saying about walking away from the deal with the publisher, which can be such a scary thing to do, to walk away from an opportunity, and an opportunity to feel a little bit secure at the expense of other kinds of security. Like security in one’s person or in one’s values and stuff.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Danez, do you have a thing like that that you walked away from, that you said no to, and that in hindsight, was a good decision?

Danez Smith: No, but I can think of a time I should have.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Okay. Okay.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Yeah, I think—

Franny Choi: In hindsight, would’ve been a good decision.

Danez Smith: In hindsight, would’ve been. You know, I won’t get into it too much, but there was a project that I did where, in hindsight, I think, as excited as I was for it, and as it was great, because I had this thing, right? But the bad part of it was I think it actually helped validate a company that I should not have aligned myself so quickly to, and was actually very critical of.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: Yeah, so I think that with a little bit more age and hindsight and maybe slowness, I would’ve had a different conversation with myself. You know, I wish I could just go talk to my mid-20s self and be like, “Hey boo, you don’t actually need to say ‘yes’ to that thing, even if it will go on to do a lot of good. Be firm that you can stand firmly in your ground about what you believe in and who you are proud to walk alongside.” And I think that’s a lesson that it took me a little too long to come to. That there should not only be a pride in your work, but a great pride in who you do that work with. And that it shouldn’t just be like, well, I’m doing it and I’m happy enough to have it out there, so, okay, I’ll bite the bullet and work with these folks. But it should really be—

Franny Choi: That’s also—that’s hard when you don’t have a lot of opportunities, especially.

Danez Smith: Whoooo. Truly.

Franny Choi: Or if you perceive yourself as not having opportunities, you know?

Danez Smith: Which is why I think what Aurielle did is so hard and heroic. And at the time I didn’t know I really had the space to make that decision, because I felt like I had to make this decision that was about my future, which was about taking this thing and running with it. It’s one of those things that you can only learn from hindsight and that you just pass on to people under you, because you wish you could’ve done different. I wish I would’ve walked a little longer in that decision, if even just to feel better about it now.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Danez Smith: Where are you at with your ‘no’ growth?

Franny Choi: I mean, I think- the one thing that I can think of is a job that I decided not to continue for another year after my first year of it, because even though there was a bit of stability in having this regular paycheck, the work that I really wanted to do was art and organizing. And even though this job aligned with a lot of my values, it was just taking me away from this stuff that I was really passionate about. You know, that like, got me out of bed in the morning.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Franny Choi: I had to make an active choice to believe that I would be okay, you know?

Danez Smith: What you’re saying and what Aurielle was saying, I think it’s reframing the leap of faith for me. I think we always think about the leap of faith of being like, going from this place of you’ve been journeying to the space and you now gotta jump into this new possibility. And I think sometimes, the leap of faith is actually the leap back to the road, and knowing that the journey continues on a little bit, right?

Franny Choi: Right!

Danez Smith: So it is a leap of faith to jump out of the book contract. It’s a leap of faith to leave the job and say, I know that whoever is helping me order these steps, even if that’s just me, is gonna be alright for a little bit, so.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Amen for the jump back, too, in the leap of faith, you know?

Franny Choi: Right. Right. It’s something that I think that we have to continually do and continually recalibrate for ourselves at every point. Because there will always be leaps of faith, and there will always be points that we have to refocus, so.

Danez Smith: Amen. Well let’s leap on out this episode.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Let’s see, let’s do some thank-yous.

Franny Choi: Danez Smith—

Danez Smith: What.

Franny Choi: —the queen of tiny transitions.

Danez Smith: Tiny Transitions, that’s my drag name.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Alright, let’s do some thank-yous. I would like to thank everybody who wears their mask. At the time of this recording, it is late July, and a lot of y’all here in Minnesota at least, are acting like it’s just regular flu season or something like that again. And I would like to remind you that it is still a pandemic, and that many of us are vulnerable ourselves, and we have vulnerable people in our lives. And so, just because we are sick of corona as Americans doesn’t mean that it’s over as a globe. So I’m just really thankful whenever I am walking or biking or stuff like that, and I see somebody with their mask on, I wanna reach out and touch their hand from six feet away and say, “Thank you, my sistah, for making sure that me and my grandma and all the folks, you know, stay alive.” So, that’s it. Thank you for wearing your mask. Keep going.

Franny Choi: That was really nice, Danez. I just wanna thank JOANN Fabrics—

Danez Smith: (GASPS)

Franny Choi: for supplying—

Danez Smith: what a real bitch!

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) supplying people everywhere with cheap, accessible-ish fabrics to sew masks and give tutorials, and also, so that I can hoard sewing supplies that I will never use. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Thanks, Jo-Ann.

Danez Smith: I get my notebooks from JOANN Fabrics. This notebook right here, girl. (KNOCKS ON NOTEBOOK) Solid! Five dollars, okay? Good paper stock, okay you hear me?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: You hear me? I’m writing on canvas, bitch. You hear me? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Jo-Ann hooked that up. No, wait, this actually might’ve been my good bitch, Michael.

Franny Choi: I was gonna say, that sounds like a Michael, not Jo-Ann. I mean, Michael is great too. We love Michael.

Danez Smith: I fucks with both of them. I fucks with Michael and Jo-Ann. They good family, they a solid couple.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) We’d also like to thank Ydalmi Noriega and Itzel Blancas at the Poetry Foundation. Thank you to our producer, Daniel Kisslinger, as always, always and forever. Thank you to you, our listeners. Thank you to Postloudness, and thank you to all of you for continuing to listen to us.

Danez Smith: If you wanna like, rate, or subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, that would be great, and we thank you so. Also, if you wanna follow us on Twitter, it is @Vsthepodcast. If you wanna see us in person, you can put on your mask and meet us at your local JOANN Fabrics, and with that, we are gonna get on outta here. Thank you, y’all. We’ll see you in another two weeks with another interview with your new favorite poet. Bye!

Franny Choi: Bye!