VS Season 6 Episode 7

Maya Marshall vs. Priorities

Transcription by: Akilah Muhammad

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

Hey, y’all! My name is Brittany Rogers, and my current corner of TikTok is the spicy brain Black girls. Extra bonus points if they're kink friendly.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hi, and my name is Ajanaé Dawkins, and my favorite YouTube rabbit hole is vocal coaches analyzing Black gospel singers. 

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

Very on brand. 

Ajanaé Dawkins 

And you're listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Brittany Rogers

And we are your co-hosts, Brittany and Ajanaé.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Today, we are going to be interviewing the beautiful, illustrious Maya Marshall, but before we get into that, best how you feelin’?

Brittany Rogers

Pretty good! I lowkey can’t complain, best. How are you?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, same, same. Can't complain. I'm in a great place. I was just eating some lasagna. It was delicious. And so I want to, my question for you today is in alternate world where you aren't a poet, what's something else you might’ve been?

Brittany Rogers

Honestly, I would probably nanny, but like for the baby babies. So I could just hold them. Like all day, I would spoil people's babies rotten, my God. Then I could give them back, and that would be even more delightful.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That's incredibly on brand.

Brittany Rogers

Oh my god, they cuddle so sweet. Y’all, baby smells so good. I don't want no more never, but they smell so good (laughs). So, I don't have to worry about like the money, and in a different world where I could just like cuddle people's babies, and give them back. I think I would just feel so satisfied at the end of the day. What about you, best?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I would be working with animals in some capacity, but not a vet, because they have to put them to sleep and I couldn't do it. I couldn't even work in a vet's office because the sheer fact of somebody bringing their animal in knowing it's about to get put to sleep, I would never emotionally recover. You best, you already know the vibes. 

Brittany Rogers

I was just gone say, I could just picture you inconsolable. It would not be good for them.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I would be inconsolable. I thought about applying at a vet's office, and couldn't do it. So some combination of working with animals, and like working with the land. 

Brittany Rogers

Mhmm.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So even though I ain’t really done nothing with gardening, since I was like a kid helping my grandmother, maybe like animals and farming. Let's go with that. 

Brittany Rogers

I can see that, best. I'm picturing best with the overalls or whatever, you know what I'm saying. Diggin’ in the dirt.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, I just have to get over my fear of bees.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

That's holding me back. (Laughs). 

Brittany Rogers

Learn something new about you every day (laughs). You know, it makes sense. I don't know that I've heard you use that language before. But now that I'm even thinking about us outside at times, I'm like, nope, that all tracks. It all tracks. Okay, so you heard it here, folks. In an alternate world, you would have Brittany as a nanny, and Ajanaé as a farmer. But in this world today, we are still poets and your co-hosts of VS. So we're going to read Maya Marshall's bio, so we can jump into this interview. Maya Marshall is the author of the full length poetry collection All the Blood Involved in Love, and the chapbook Secondhand. She is the co-founder of underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. She teaches poetry at Emory University. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Let's get into it.

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

Maya, we would love it if you would start the show off by reading us a poem.

Maya Marshall

Okay, I'm going to read this poem, “Field of Blood”. [Recites “Field of Blood”]

In the hospital, the man I love lowers

his eyes. Catheter. Cotton.

I join his mother for a walk.

If I were your mother,

I’d tell you not to marry him.

My own mother says

I can’t stay with a sick man.

You want to fix everything.

Why should we leave good things broken?

*

On some night, my love says

I wouldn’t want to be black. I—

I try to understand how he could

call blackness the burden,

not the whiteness heaped on top of it.

Blackness is not a failure

of the body. I bleed daily

for a month,

produce a liver-shaped thing.

He rinses his blood

with a chemical cocktail

every third Thursday.

We make nothing—no child

no pacts—but distance,

until we both lose.

*

On some day, in our home,

my love says our child

would not be black.

But we’re American,

I think, and say

she would.

*

He thinks we understand each

other because of his illness

and my blackness,

but my blackness

does not make me sick.

Love has betrayed my heart.

*

I’m sure Judas loved Jesus, but fear is a tyrant.

In this story, you’re Judas and I’m Judas too.

A cynic would say he just loved money more.

But what would they say to the field of blood?

I loved my man and our cats but the girl in my chest

will always chase the storm in the field, abandon

the ghost in the house, leave the blood and water

running in the bathtub and hair on the floor, walk

into the warm spring night in a blackout, follow the moon

down the sidewalk—eyes glinting like the backyard cougars

of my youth—and leave you with your bare heart

and your mended bones waiting for me

to come back. A version of me will leave and let the felines

starve, because the beast in me does not want to be needed.

A cat’s cry mimics an infant’s cry.

I like to think I could deny even this.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Whew, Jesus. I remember when I first read this poem. I knew I was in for a time when I got to, his mother says I would tell you not today. I was like, all right. I was like buckle up buttercup. 

Maya Marshall

(Laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Because this was is wheeew!

Brittany Rogers

For me, is when you got to uh, you’re Judas and I’m Judas too. I said, okay! 

Maya Marshall

(Laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Babyyy!

Brittany Rogers

Not we implicating the self! Hold on! 

Maya Marshall

(Continues laughter).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen!

Brittany Rogers

Am I too Judas? I was like wait a second! 

Ajanaé Dawkins

But aren’t we all! 

Maya Marshall

Am I too Judas? (Laughing). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Honestly,

Maya Marshall

Yes? 

Ajanaé Dawkins

We were literally, I'm so happy you wrote that poem.

Brittany Rogers

Listener, if you don't have All the Blood Involved in Love, the line breaks also go crazy in that poem. 

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Bananas.

Brittany Rogers

You should get a physical copy if you don't have a physical copy. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

The line breaks go crazy in the whole book. There's one line that I think like broke and then like to the next page. And so like it took me to the next page to see what was. And I was like, listen,

Maya Marshall

(Laughing). I don't know what this woman's problem is. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I said, now Maya. 

Maya Marshall

(Continues laughter). 

Brittany Rogers

Why was she do us this way?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen, I personally, 

Brittany Rogers

When I feel vulnerable I feel attacked. I’m not gone lie to you. (Laughing). 

Maya Marshall

(Continues laughter). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Personally, was over here like, alright, welp, goodnight. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Because nobody even asked you to do that. 

Maya Marshall

(Laughing). No more interacting for the rest of the day!

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Literally. 

Maya Marshall

Because nobody asked about them. 

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). Like, I feel feelings. Now I got these funny feelings. Now I gotta ask myself irrelevant questions.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Honestly, that’s, that's exactly, exactly what this collection did for me. So I'm super excited that we get to talk to you today! And we want to know what's moving you these days? 

Maya Marshall

What’s moving me these days? I've been really into this moment of reading about environmental or reading environmental writing, reading about environmental justice, reading just like beautifully rendered stories of every day flora and fauna, and people just moving to the space that is earth as it exists right now. So I read this book, called Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl, who writes for, like, The New York Times or something fancy. And I read Camille Dungy’s book, the Guidebook to Relative Strangers. It's like a memoir, travel, motherhood book. And it's, I don't know, maybe 10 or 12 essays about traveling through the United States, as a recent parent or right before becoming a parent. I spend a lot of time thinking about being a parent, because I am, I see it as quite the calling, but one that I don't expect to answer. And that feels like a lot of meaning, a lot of choice I'm making for my maternal line, for my future. And part of the reason I, you know, as a teenager, thought I don't want to be a parent, is I wanted to be a writer, and I felt like many, many, many people who can birth children feel that I would have to choose. Then I was listening to Marilyn Nelson at the Poetry Foundation, and she talked about feeling like she made a good choice, but a difficult choice to clip her wings when she had children. And she described a postcard she'd seen with a woman holding a newborn baby, and sort of angel's wings bloodied on the floor, and her, you know, blood running down her back. And that feels resonant to me always. So Camille Dungey’s choice to write about being in her body in various spaces in the United States, one, allows me to think about environmental writing as being about landscape and place wherever the objects are, wherever the body is, rather than has some wild, and densely populated with trees and flora kind of space. Because, you know, the world has been conquered. And so that's not what nature really looks like for us anymore. And that means I can write about wherever I am, as I work on teaching myself how to write essays. And think about safety, and proximity, and movement, and freedom. So your original question is what's moving me these days? Yeah, stories about being most alive in our bodies, in our real spaces, and the freedom to move about. Yeah, I think about lots of things at a time. So I’ve been thinking a lot about simultaneity. It’s been a good year, a big year, a full year. I fell in love with a person.

Ajanaé & Brittany 

Awww.

Maya Marshall

Which is lovely. I like him a lot. He's a big, kind, John Henry kind of human. 

Brittany Rogers

(Softly) we love that. 

Maya Marshall

And it was a surprise, because it was like six weeks after I moved here. I was like, Oh, wow. But then, you know, he got diagnosed with cancer, which is surprising and unfortunate, right. And frightening. And not like, like cancer or like, let's get rid of this one mole. But like this might be short, and important love affair. But I don't, I trust that it will not be. Anyway, I think about that, about simultaneity, about everything happening all at once.

Brittany Rogers

That’s a gorgeous the answer. And already has me like stewing in so many different directions. I think I'm always like, particularly touched when folks are talking about the, the autonomy, and weight, and consequences of motherhood because I feel like that's like, I have three kids. And I have sibling like kids. And so I don't know that I remember not feeling like somebody's mother. And I think that there's a way in which it’s expected to be like, celebrated all the time. And like, that's cute or whatever, but that's also just not (laughs), it's not very factual or practical. And I won't say that, like, I feel like I didn't have a choice, because that's not true, right. But I will say that as like our oldest daughter, you know, there are some ways where you kind of don't. And so I always appreciate people talking about really sitting with the autonomy of that choice and decision making, because I think that's like, hella important, and so valid, and so unspoken of.

Maya Marshall

Yeah, and diminished, right? Like it's, I'm the youngest child, right. So yes, I was raised with just me and my mom and that meant I had responsibilities in our household, but it wasn't caretaking, which means I've pretty much always had the freedom of only taking care of myself or being taken care of. And so I made an effort, I made a choice to take care of myself longterm, which meant, you know, I'm not gonna act like I'm old, old, but I'm not young, young either. So waiting until this point in my life to decide that I would take on partnership, maybe I'm the only one that sees this, but I doubt it, there is an expectation for women to be caretaking in some partnership. To like have the most successful thing you do to be becoming a partner, to becoming a parent, and not to give space to your imagination, and creativity, and that is the thing I was, I am interested in nourishing. So as much as being an oldest daughter really does start you off as a parent pretty early, there's this other kindred set of assumed or imposed responsibilities that says any female child should find a way to take care of somebody instead of investing in her creation.

Brittany Rogers

That made me think a lot about, what you just said takes me back to the book because one of the things I loved most about it was that I got the sense of longing. But I appreciated that the longing wasn't for what like the expected things were. You know what I mean? Like when you talk about love is not like, okay, I want this fairytale love. It's very much I want the possibilities. I was saying to Ajanaé before this started, was that I felt like this book laid out so many possibilities, but didn't necessarily give me like a resolution or an ending, which I loved because I'm like, okay, we get to choose. And autonomy is really important to me. I would love if you were open to talking about like how the longing for autonomy shapes, like your work or your thought process even in terms of poetry. 

Maya Marshall

I might call it stubbornness (laughs) or fierce independence. I am gonna say this thing that I think is funny, I'm an Aquarius. 

Ajanaé & Brittany

(Laughing).

Maya Marshall

Like, if my books, anything (laughing). I know that it was born in June, and yet, she is an Aquarius. What’s the possibility? And that's important. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I hollered. 

Maya Marshall

(Laughing). I want to be able to come to every point, and see what the choices lie ahead, and make those choices. Maybe in collaboration, but certainly whichever one is best for my spirit. And I'm unwilling to allow a circumstance where I don’t get to do that. So it means sacrificing some things like, like neat endings, or people sometimes, which is why like, exercise is important to me in the process of making poems. That choosing to begin with an exercise is like, there's a poem in here called “Anatomy of a Fish Hook”, which started…

Ajanaé Dawkins

A banger. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

I really liked that poem too, thanks! But it started as a negative image. This is where you sort of write the opposite of every word on the page in someone else's column. So what's the opposite of fish? What is the opposite of the word aim, you know. Then once you have that sort of bag of words you revise into sense making. I added also the words that are, that describe the parts of a fishhook. Because I wanted to think about relationship with this woman that I loved. And the things that were complicating it, this sort of feeling hooked in it, but it means that I didn't know where the language was gonna go, because they started with some structure that existed, and then moved into possibility based on what was on that page. That's that's kind of how I think about the structure that leaning towards possibility offers not as something that removes options, necessarily. But it's one that opens a set of pathways that are navigable, and visible, and not overwhelming because they're determined.

Brittany Rogers

I love that you say not overwhelming, because I think sometimes possibility makes me feel overwhelmed.

Maya Marshall

Real stressful. 

Brittany Rogers

Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Also, that exercise, I'm like, can you send me that?

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I was like, ooh, I want to try that. I love that poem. I also really appreciate the place of possibility in this book, and autonomy. Brittany and I, we've talked a lot about this book, if it’s not already obvious, we were very excited! 

Maya Marshall

Thank you. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

And something that, a few things really stuck out to me, but one of the things that I wanted to ask you about was this place of autonomy in relationship, and autonomy in vulnerability. So this idea that kind of keeps coming up in the poems in different ways of like, when somebody makes themselves vulnerable to you, then like, there are these options that you have like, and one of the options that continuously comes up in the book is this option to protect. To protect and choose tenderness, or to choose a form of violence, or to choose another thing. Protecting is always in the list of options that you have for someone. And I'm really invested in how this idea of maybe protecting loved ones, protecting kin, or just protecting folks who have made themselves vulnerable, like may have driven some of your writing process, because I was so struck by this like continued language for what does it mean to like, not just be like, I love somebody, but like, my love means I defend you, my love means I protect you, I shield you, I guard you.

Maya Marshall

Isn't it? Doesn't it? I think that's a defining characteristic of the ideal version of mother Love. Right? I make you, I protect you. I think that the ways in which I have internalized and acted on my assumptions about gender have become clear to me when I enter relationships with people who do not seek to protect me. It's very shocking, when it happens that way. The ways in which, you know, daughters are expected to become caretakers implies, insists on an effort to protect the beloved first before the self. I'm recently learning to think, and mean myself first, when I say love, when I say I love. You know, love is not a sweet thing, always. I come from a people hurt. I just, you know, this is an after life of enslavement is choosing kinship, this persistent choosing, knowing now we come from a same place, but that we don't have clear lineage because it was taken, knowing that there is a danger outside always, and that we are protectors, knowing that secrecy is protective and destructive. You know, a thing is never only one thing, so love is one of these things that encapsulates fear, and hatred, and protection, and dedication, and soothing touch, you know, all of the things. So, that's yeah, the book is called All the Blood Involved in Love, right. I have never, since childhood, even in childhood, seen love as something purely gentle or kind. Because one of the ways to demonstrate it is to be defensive on behalf of, of your Beloved. Like, I was talking to someone I care for, and they were experiencing some fear about telling their truth to someone important in their life. And I said, you know, that person loves you so deeply that if anyone were to try to assault you, it would be on site. Right, like, done. They'd be done. Without regard for fallout, or arrest or whatever, like she would, she would squash it, because that's what is at the crux of it, I think. Choosing to care for despite fury, despite being dismissed or harmed. So there's a poem in here called “Daddy on the Sofa.” Nice old line says, tenderness is the impulse to protect what you know you could destroy, this is the gift of my father's neck.” You know, pretty often I think about this moment in the color purple where Celie’s shaving, Mister. You know, I don't know who she's protecting. But functionally she's protecting both them in choosing not to cut his neck. Protecting herself by not becoming a murderer, protecting herself from having to explain anything, protecting him from her fury. Maybe it's care to groom him. I don't know. Anyway, those are the things I think about. I think that protection is implicit in love. And when it fails, then it's not love, or when it not fails. When it's not the intention of the one who calls themselves a lover to protect, then that is not love.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I really appreciated the way that your work articulated choices that I didn't think, I don't think I realized I was making in my relationships of love. And I'm like, oh, I do make this choice. And so in this work, articulating a kind of autonomy, I think it also made me aware of my own autonomy in love. 

Maya Marshall

Mhmm. Yaaay!

Ajanaé Dawkins

And so, yeah.

Maya Marshall

Right, it's not always this sort of overwhelming, compulsive experience. 

Ajanaè Dawkins

Yes.

Maya Marshall

Yeah, maybe that's therapy talking. I'm like, okay, I do have my feelings, but for my feelings do not make decisions. Oh, but listen.

Brittany Rogers

Oh, but listen!

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

Feelings are not facts.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

I was just about to say that!

Ajanaé Dawkins

Let me tell you! 

Brittany Rogers

But my therapist will be like, you felt that thing, but do you have to act on it? I'm like, wow, you mean to tell me (laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

But feelings are playing the part of facts. Feelings are playing that part. They are acting a role, okay! Because I be like, are the fact though?

Maya Marshall

They're true unto themselves. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes. 

Maya Marshall

But, I'm not compelled if I take a moment to pause. An asset, pausing is an asset. Then I get to decide how to choose a response to them, right. And like, every fucking movie out there will have you believe that you have to do whatever love compels, like tells you to do, and that’s not true (laughs). It's not true. I'm so grateful to hear that. That conversation is something that happened in your head, between your head in this book.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, that's beautiful. 

Brittany Rogers

I'm thinking back to what you mentioned a few minutes ago about secrecy. Because that was something that came up for me in the book. Like, I have a very, very matriarchal family. And the secrets are abundant. You hear me! I'm like, why do y’all do this? My God!

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Brittany Rogers

Listen, that's what I was thinking about as I was reading, because I do think that, you know, at this, so I'm listening. I'm 35, right. And at this point, every year, I learned a new secret in my family. And I'm like, oh, well, when were we gonna talk about this? Or when are we gonna talk about that? Or, I brought this thing up at the family table, and everybody acted like they didn't hear me, and then we just kept talking, and I'm like, what? What is going on?

Maya Marshall

That's such a power move.Refusing to answer a question posed to you directly, that's such a like a G move.

Brittany Rogers

Oh, and let me tell you (laughs). Whew, the stubborn and my family is an honoree, cantankerous, outlast. Everybody is stubborn, right. But I think your book caused me to think about secrecy even as, as a different sort of choice. Because I think I often see it in like a negative space. But thinking about like the hurt, you know, the ancestry, all of those things in secrecy, it made me reconsider how much of that is protecting me where if even in the moment, you know, my feelings are hurt, because I don't know this thing. Long term, there's this thing that I don't know, and who knows what that thing I could learn might do to me, right? So I think that brought up then larger questions about even in writing, like, what do we reveal? What do we not reveal? Like, what do we keep secret? What do we hold to us? And I think it’s making me wonder in this conversation, like if you have a way that you prioritize, like, what you keep secret versus what makes it to, to the page?

Maya Marshall

You know, the balance for me, it's always like, what information is crucial to understanding the emotional terrain of this thing? What information is mine to share, and which isn't demonstrative gesture, or detail can be here that says something true that may or may not be true to, to a lived experience? Because, you know, we're making poems, those are made objects that are separate from nonfiction, right? Said so many things. Okay. So sometimes secrets are there for our protection, right? Like if I learned some things when I was a child, it would have been traumatic for me, learning them at 38, it's revelatory about the people I love, right? Oh, this is where we come from, oh, this is why things have been the way they are. This is how you hold your hurt, etcetera. I think process wise, I decide which things get to be public, through revision and conversation. Asked permission for some of the details in this book, and some of them, some of the details are true to the emotional terrain, and not anybody's lived experience. And choosing the secret, which is which, that's my job right now. When you were talking about, Ajanaé, emotional autonomy, no, relationship, romantic autonomy, which secrets we know about ourselves that we don't share with our partners are part of that. You know, which is allowed, but it also, you know, it's a risk and benefit situation.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listener, it probably doesn't sound like it, but I'm being screamed at right now (laughs). I'm being (inaudible).

Maya Marshall

I'm sorry, I do not mean to personally insult.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Oh my gosh.

Maya Marshall

Yeah, you just made something clear for me. That's, that's what comes clear for me. I was talking to somebody the other day about, like, what's the point of fighting with your family? Right? Like, if the end game or like, you just don't talk anymore is not on the table, then what are we doing? Like, I know, you hear and understand me, I hear and understand you, is that the end of it? Because anything beyond that is like, I see that you don't, uh, that you're not using the same value system I'm using, and I'm not going to convince you to, and I won't be using your value system. So we just like see and accept? That's the point of arguing? I guess. Something similar, this just feels akin to me, to saying like, alright, well, what do you, what is your role in my life that if it is not to help me live healthfully as I help you live healthfully? Right, like, did you see this pattern? Because I feel like you could be free from it if you would not do this thing you saw her do. this it?

Brittany Rogers

Listen!

Maya Marshall

You're like, okay. Too close! 

Ajanaé Dawkins

But it's also very much so like, hmm, let's try it anyway! 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

That’s usually the issue like, I know we’'ve seen this play out for multiple generations, but let's get it going!

Maya Marshall

Might be different! My turn! And you know, it might be. Anyway, so this book is super light, keeping it easy.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

A lot of jokes.

Brittany Rogers

Whew! My (inaudible) is gone hear myself in these questions, let me tell you! (Laughing). Unlocking some family patterns over here, but that does make me think about family. Again, as the oldest sibling, second mom, first granddaughter, first daughter in a long matriarchy. The number of fights that we've had or not had, right, not to delve too deep, but there are like lots of, you know, undiagnosed things in my family that goes also into those secret keepings that we have. So like, there are choices that are made about, am I going to have this argument with you, because what good is it? If I'm not disowning, you, which I'm not, then really you just go raise my blood pressure for no reason, because I know what's on the other side of this thing.

Ajanaé Dawkins

One of the things that I'm thinking about in this is this process of getting older, and how we change, how our relationships change, the dynamics of those things change. And you use this phrase, in some of the conversation we had before, aging out of promise. And I've been like, super stuck on it. Because I'm like, what does that mean (laughs)? And I wanted to know if you could expand on what this concept of aging out of promise is for you. Because I also think the concept of age is really present in like, an undercurrent in the book as well.

Maya Marshall

I think I mean something about the kind of youthful exploration, and potential that exists when one is young, and that that diminishes over time, because there is less time to use without intention, right. If we recognize time is our sort of only resource, and, you know, the, the young folks, people, people 30 and under, maybe have more of it to spend in ways that might not have pay off later. And you sort of like protect you in your old age kind of pay off I mean. And I don't necessarily mean money, though, I'm using the language of capital. I like to believe, and I think it's true when I look at women in their 50s and 60s, and their 70s, that we can invest in how we spend our time later. And that there remains potential for types of relationships we assign to young folks, but I don't know what it looks like on that end. Aging out of promise, I think I was really just using in the context of like thinking about the American Road Trip is something that's about a journey towards self, or growth or, you know, some sort of big discovery at the end. And I think the older I get, the more I know, that type of big discovery is not something that arrives all at once, but it's an accumulation of learned experience over time, and that aging out of the types of potential lives we could have had is something that I think takes up a lot of the 30s. It’s like alright, well I'm gonna make this decision, which means I can't make this other one. I won't live this life over here. You know, in the thick of, in the fleshy part of life. Like maybe I can get in a van and drive around for a month when I'm 50 or 70 because of decisions I’m making. Not, and you know, I guess I could mourn it. But really, it's just that we only have so much time.

Brittany Rogers

I think there's something so clear eyed about your writing. Like so, so concise and like looking at the possibilities and being able to assess and say okay, what Tyra say? I have two pictures before me. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

And only one of these can make it to the next round. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Whoever does not, must immediately pack up your bags, and go.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

One is like, I was rooting for you.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

Oh, but I think that's such a brilliant way to kind of explain it or to think about it. Especially in the not mourning like the life that you didn't choose. So I do you think that my younger, if we can call them younger years, because I felt like I've had kids for so long that they don't feel the type of younger that I felt like my some of my other friends had. I'm like, oh, you were footloose and fancy free. I would give good money to be footloose and fancy free. And so I think some of my footloose has come more as I age. Because I'm like, okay, my kids are a little bit older. Now I can live this other self, but this other self still looks different than what it could have looked like. Um, and being able to say okay, but I can't be sad about that. I have to just, this is what it is. And I think your work gave me a very practical like, okay, this is this. This is that. How are we like moving through it?

Maya Marshall

I mean when we’re talking about simultaneity, I was talking to someone who loves me the other day, and she was like, it sounds like you want it all. And I was like, yeah. She was like, have you considered doing it sequentially? 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

I was like, see, that's why I came to talk to you. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

You said, that’s the thing. 

Maya Marshall

Yeah we can, but not all at the same time.

Brittany Rogers 

That's hard to do at the same time. I feel like people be like, how do you juggle things? And I always be like, poorly.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

I'm not doing anything as well as I would like to because I am doing everything.

Brittany Rogers

Some of the things are going well on right now. Other things are not so much, you know, just pick on any given day.

Maya Marshall

I mean, I didn't know what this book was gonna do for people, in people. And it sounds like it's doing good things. I’m so grateful to hear that.

Brittany Rogers

Great things. Marvelous things. Great experience. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

No, it definitely is.

Brittany Rogers

I was going to ask you about this this cross country road trip, right? Because I feel like the idea of travel has come up multiple times in exploration, and kind of what being in different spaces or locales can do. When you mentioned traveling for yourself as a part of your personal exploration, are there ways that the places that you go to shift, are there ways that it shifts your writing or shows up in your writing?

Maya Marshall

I have been driving around for various reasons, retreats, and residencies, and moves, and to see friends and family for the last five years, or forever, whatever. And I've been taking pictures, and going on walks, and all that kind of thing, just sort of pay attention to what's around me. And when I moved into my place here, my first place in Atlanta, where I moved to be back in the South, and to be outside and have summer, which feels like what I mean, when I say summer. I put up all those pictures around my living room and my dining room. And I would get up in the morning and write for like 15 minutes in response to each one of them. Different ones every day, not in any particular order. Because the book I'm working on now is about using outdoor space for healing and, you know, that means that I think about being Southern, and think about being in a sort of site of former Black terror as a place of current Black healing. And so like process wise, that has been a major impact of traveling. I was thinking about taking this drive to Texas, which is a scary undertaking. More scary because now I'm older, and I know what bad things actually happened, and not, you know, 19 where I'm like, those bad things won't happen to me because I’m invincible. I was like, huh, I'm 25 and no longer invincible. Now I’m like, I'm 38 like, be careful. I check my AAA, I got an oil change, and transmission fluid change. I’ll be stopping every other hour to make sure someone knows where I am. I'm still gonna do the trip, but it doesn't feel, but it's still exploratory. You know, I’m thinking like, will, I stop at a National Park? I got the national parks pass, you know, so I can go to any one in the country and look around, because I want to see where I live, where we live. And the outside, outdoorsy folks tend to be not Black people because of safety. 

Brittany Rogers

I was gonna say, because they have no fear (laughs).

Maya Marshall

Yeah, because it belongs to them. I was reading, if you've ever read just like travel writing or writing in Outside magazine or Nature, it's always some dude who's like, I drove all the way across the country, and at no point did I feel like I don't belong. I’m like, okay. 

[ALL LAUGHING] 

Maya Marshall

Such a really specific lived experience that most bodies don’t get to have.

Ajanaé Dawkins

There was like this meme, or, I don’t know if it was a meme or somebody, but somebody was like posting things that like, inherently feel racist, and one of them was just like the woods.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Just like the woods and trees, and I was like, yooo.

Maya Marshall

Yeah, like that's ours too.You know, being in between spaces allows for like liminal thinking, you know, like, without interruption, because there's, it's like automatic to get through an airport, or go through, go on a train, or drive on a highway in one direction. So my brain can go wherever it wants to. And then I think thoughts that otherwise wouldn't think to write down. Two simple answers. One process based, and the other for like, giving my imagination space to move around.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So before we go into our game, if we are going to read you, right, which we have, obviously, what, three folks, any genre would you say like, these are people who have like, deeply informed my work, and if you want to most understand my work, these are the people, and literally any genre, like if there's like a cake baker, and it's like, you got to look at that cake to know how we got to “The Field of Blood”, then that's.

Maya Marshall

I love that. I'm gonna say an answer that is both true, and that makes me feel a way, because I've just read so many other writers since then. But like my shit when I was a teenager would be to like skip school and go to the bookstore. And then just like read Charles Bukowski just all the time, all the time, because (inaudible) like gritty, I am who I am, maybe it's ugly, but there's beauty in that kind of thing, and that’s what Charles Bukooski is all about. Nevermind him as a man, I don't know him like that. There was like a decade long period where the answer to this question would be Nina Simone's album, Little Girl Blue. I've never been as fierce as she is, but I try to be as honest. She's amazing. And I don't know something with some, some whimsy, something. There’s like the tiniest bit of whimsy in this book. That's why the images are strange. So maybe like, I spend a lot of time looking at surrealism, and (inaudible) images when I was a kid in high school. So I feel like things that maybe don't belong together definitely belong together. Actually, here's the real answer that question if you can think of like a 1990s style cafe, the Black girl barista there is the person you need to understand for this book to make sense. Whatever Max Ernst, move over it's barista.

[ALL LAUGHING]

[BACKGROUND MUCIS PLAYS]

Brittany Rogers

Alright, so we're gonna play a game called Fast Punch where you get to tell us the best of things, or the worst of things, but like, rapid fire. 

Maya Marshall

Okay. 

Brittany Rogers

So, do you want to be an optimist and tell us the best of things, or do you want to be a pessimist and tell us the worst of things?

Maya Marshall

Worst of things. I'm pretty positive in general.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that.

Brittany Rogers

All right, let's get started.

[BELL EFFECT CHIMES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Let’s do it. Worst city to drive through?

Maya Marshall

I don't know, any city in Indiana. Trash. Trash state. Great poets. 

Brittany Rogers

Worst outdoor activity?

Maya Marshall

I mean like hiking on the top of the mountain on a July day. It's hot. It's too hot for this.

Brittany Rogers

Alright, worst love story ever told?

Maya Marshall

Um, Love and Basketball. Trash. Let me tell you why. He’s just mean to her the whole movie, and is like nevermind, your career. Why don’t you give up your career to talk to me about my dad being so sick or dying or whatever after I was mean, and chose this other girl over you? Like it's just trash, the whole thing, and then they're together making less money, because the women make less money playing the same sport, and then get drafted to friggin Russia. Anyway, different story. I hate it. It makes me mad every time. My brother’s, like I guess perspective is a thing because I really loved it.

Brittany Rogers

You’re not wrong. I love the sentiment of the movie, but every time I'm like, whew chile, there's red flags everywhere.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I’ll play you for your heart. The most despised line in the history of lines. 

Maya Marshall

Disrespectful. Anyway.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Sick. Worse chain restaurant chain?

Maya Marshall

P.F. Chang’s. It’s sticky, and might have too much sugar in all over the meals.

Ajanaé Dawkins

In the words of Brittany, Am I a bird? I love P.F. Chang’s.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love P.F. Chang’s! 

Brittany Rogers

And I am a bird, sometimes. 

Maya Marshall

I’m like here for a Chili's. Like alpha sticky. I just really like Tex Mex I guess. See, the problem with me being a pessimist, I'm like but there is a silver lining.

Brittany Rogers

The worst emotion? 

Maya Marshall

Impotence.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And lastly, worst karaoke song?

Maya Marshall

You know what? You can't sing like Freddie Mercury. Like it's a great sing along, but you're not gonna hit the notes to “Bohemian Rhapsody”. It’s really long, now we're all committed.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Maya Marshall

It’s too long, and you can't do it by yourself. Actually, here's, I'm changing my answer. Here's the song we all know and love that we'd like to sing along to. But that is a downer. “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman, and it’s not your karaoke song. You want it to be. We all love it. We all enjoyed singing it to ourselves. We think she should come back and sing it to us now. But it's a downer. And that's not what the bar is looking for.

Brittany Rogers

Okay, you won the game! 

[CROWD CHEERING EFFECT]

Brittany Rogers

Those were good answers! I must say! 

Ajanaé Dawkins

You won your prize, and actually, the real tea is, phenomenal answers, the prize is not for you. The prize is for us because the prize is we get to ask you to read us another poem. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

With another poem in the closing.

Maya Marshall

Okay, I'm gonna read a poem that is not in my book. (Inaudible).

Brittany Rogers

Exclusive!

Maya Marshall

He was like, people are going to be excited about your book. They won't know what it is, what it's titled unless you say it. I wrote a book that's called All the Blood Involved in Love.

Ajanaé Dawkins

A banger. 

Maya Marshall

Thank you.This poem is not in it. But it will be in the next one. Here we go. [Reads poem].

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listener, Brittany is crying, which is why she’s quiet. 

Brittany Rogers

Why would you tell them that, oh my god. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm sorry. 

Brittany Rogers

It is true, she's not lying. Oh my god. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

I don't believe Maya did that to me. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Ain’t no reason for it.

Brittany Rogers

I just don't believe that after that bomb ass interview, she would just drop that poem and then dip.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Like my heart. Ruined our lives. Ruined our lives.

Brittany Rogers

I'm going to be thinking so much about love ethic, and the ways that love equates to like power and autonomy and choice, which I feel like are things that are so very, very rarely mentioned in conjunction with love.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, I'm thinking about that and what we do to protect those that we love. I feel like it's still resonating with me, because I think it's hitting so hard for me because I realize how few places in the world that I feel protected. But I always feel protected by the folks who I know love me. 

Brittany Rogers

Yes. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I always feel covered by y’all, and so, and whew, in a country where they ain’t in us at all!

Brittany Rogers

Listen, they don’t give a good goddamn.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Don't give a damn.

Brittany Rogers

Speaking of love ethic, best, how do you know when someone loves you?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I feel loved when I'm really really intimately known. And that knowing allows me to not have to worry about how I'm being perceived through my performance, or how I navigate the world. I think so much of my anxiety in the world is like wanting to make sure my intentions are clear. Or wanting to make sure that if something that I'm doing are saying doesn't always align or measure up to like, a social standard, or could be read a certain way, like, wanting to clarify that, and with people who truly love me, I don't have to clarify because they always assume the best of me. And in the few times where I won't say they're not assuming the best of me. And but where they know better, it's because they know better, and not because they wouldn't assume the best in me. And because they know better, they can call me out and be like, girl, get it together, and I can be like, dang, my bad. But like if you're giving me short answers, you know, I'm never like, oh, gosh, Brittany's being so rude today, or Brittany must hate me. Or anything like that. I'm always like, Brittany so tired, girl take a nap. Or maybe I can be curious and be like, best, what's going on with you? But I never take it as a personal affront, or as like an indicator of your character.

Brittany Rogers

Which I am so wildly grateful for listener. Between you and Maya, okay listen, I gotta get out of here. I think I know, that someone loves me, or at the very least is on the path to loving me well, when when they begin to take things off my plate without me having to ask for it. I, which is ironic, because I don't think that I'm a very big, like, acts of service oriented person. I don't think it's the act per se, I think it's when somebody is able to see past me looking efficient, or like looking like I have all these things together. Or like I'm juggling things well, and see that I need assistance. I think that's the part that makes me feel love. And I think that because there are so many ways where I struggle a bit with like asking for help and vulnerability. I think someone, it feels like a kindness to me, when someone loves me enough to understand that I do in fact need help. And also loves me enough to not like embarrass me by making me ask. And for me like those two things like both that seeing, and that grace, because you could be like, okay, you know what I'm saying closed mouth, don't get fed. And I'd be like, okay. And best I think, you know better than anybody that long suffering is one of those fruits of the spirits that very much clung to and was like, I can take a hit like, you know, that's fine. I take that on the chin. But I do feel loved when people see that that's what I'm doing, versus when people are like, oh, no, you got it. So you don't need anything. I think that that makes a difference to me.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Oh best that makes a lot of sense. 

Brittany Rogers

Does it?

Ajanaé Dawkins

That makes all the sense in the world. Mhmm. It absolutely makes all the sense in the world knowing everything I know about you. And also knowing all the ways that I hear people talk about you. Brittany’s so strop. Could never do what Brittany does.

[BOTH LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

And I be like, shit, I can't do anything. (laughing). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Oh man. Best, I love that so much. Do you have anybody that you want to thank today? 

Brittany Rogers

Um, yeah, since we are, since we're in the throes of feelings, I think I'm going to shout out my granny. Um, because I think that she is the person who has taught me I'm not gonna like, say the most, but I think she is the person who has informed so much of my love ethic, and the way that I try to show up for people. My granny was born in the 40s and is very much like most people of that time, not necessarily vocally emotional, right. But my granny is always, always, always showed up for me like, I don't think I've ever doubted the fact that she loved me. And I tend to be pretty words of affirmation heavy. And I don't even think I realized that my granny wasn't saying I love you until I was well into adulthood. Because I think that's how well she showed up. To where it was never a question. And then when I did realize I was like, you don't tell me you love me. And we begin this slow process of me kind of being like, okay, listen, when someone who you love says I love you. The kind of thing to do is just say I love you back. And she pushed back for a while, but then she like leaned into it. And I remember my mom saying once she was like, what she told you, she loves you? And she was like, yeah! She was like, whew, chile, she must really love you, because she don’t say that to nobody, right. So things like that, I think really shaped the way that I try to show up for people. And I try to exhibit a care that's so thorough that you know whether I say it or not. So yeah, shout out to her for teaching me that.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Shout out to granny. I love granny so much. 

Brittany Rogers

That's my boo. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Also, shout out to grandmothers who don't say I love you, who just. 

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Or just hang up at the end.

Brittany Rogers

Well, she used to say thank you (laughs). (Inaudible) and be like Jesus, please. 

Brittany Rogers

What about you, best? Who you want to thank today?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm gonna take my nieces, Leila, Edy, and Marley because they were given the challenge at a recent little function to pretend to be me, and one of them was like girl get my wig (laughs). Another one was like, un-uh, these is for me not, for you! And another one was like, hey boo! What you doin’ over there, boo?! And I was like, this is ridiculous. And they have the time of their lives. So shout out to them for the amount of joy that imitating me. Will say anything! Will say anything! 

Brittany Roger

Whew, but did they lie is the question?

Ajanaé Dawkins

They didn’t lie though. They regularly bring me a lot of joy. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYS]

Ajanaé Dawkins

That was my joy for the week was watching them imitate me, and imitate me taking care of them, so. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC GROWS]

Brittany Rogers 

I love that. I would pay good money to be there. Thank you to Dani, and the staff at Bravo Ocean Studios, the Poetry Foundation, Itzel Blancas,Ydalmi Noriega, Elon Sloan, Cin Pim and Ombie Productions. Please like, rate, and subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Thank you so much for being here with us. Until next time!

[MUSIC CONTINUES]