VS Season 6 Episode 8

Mia S. Willis vs. The Black Proverb

Transcription by: Akilah Muhammad

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hi, my name is Ajanaé Dawkins, and if I had to choose a church go representative it would be Whitney Houston.

Brittany Rogers

I'm Brittany Rogers, and I'm secretly a sucker for a good romantic comedy. Like I know they're corny and predictable, but I think that's why I like them (laughs). And we are your co-hosts of VS podcast.

Ajanaé Dawkins

The podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them. 

Brittany Rogers

Today, we have the joy of interviewing Mia S. Willis, an amazing poet. But before we hop into their interview, best, something that I'm reflecting on with Mia’s work is the presence of the political, and ethics, and how they all coincide, or they’re practiced rather, to what Mia writes, and furthermore, Mia’s lived experience. And it makes me wonder, what's an incident that has shifted your politics or ethics?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think I'ma go back to my little introduction fact; thinking about Whitney Houston. 

Brittany Rogers

Mmm.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Watching the way she was treated by the public while she was alive, the way she was mocked for being someone who wrestles with addiction. And it was not like a controversial thing. It was like a part of popular media, it was a part of cartoons, and comics, and TV shows, and social media things where this woman in the spotlight had become the butt of everybody's joke. And then watching people get immediate amnesia when she passed, and only talk about her as this beloved person. That was, I think, one, made me more cautious of what it means to treat people well, while they're here. But also, it was just a reminder that y'all hate Black women. And it's like something that like we haven't learned from, like, not even a little bit. So what about you, best?

Brittany Rogers

What’s standing out? Um, most pressing to me right now is, think becoming a mother shifted and informed so much of my politics and ethics. I think I got pregnant when I was 19, or 20. Which, to be fair, my mother had me in high school, her mother had her first child in high school. So in my head, I was good and grown (laughs). I was not (laughing). I was not goof and grown, but I thought I was. And then I went through like a really messy divorce, and was like unhoused for quite some time, and had like, just a series of catastrophes happening. And I think what I was, like, wholly unprepared for it is the way that people, the lack of care that people take with Black women, or Black folks who are giving birth, and the ways in which the medical industry can be so callous. And I would love to say that that's something that I feel like has changed since I gave birth in 2008 to now, but it did not change. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

It hasn’t.

Brittany Rogers

And even thinking about like my last labor, I was most mindful of okay, I want to make it out of here. And if I just make it out of here, we can call this a wrap. Like I'm never doing this again. And I think it's so traumatizing a lot of ways, and I think about it to feel that way, right for the, to be bringing somebody into the world, and that is the thing that is on your heart, and on your mind. And I think it made me a lot more interested, and invested in supporting reproductive justice, in supporting folks medical needs, it made me a lot more mindful of the different medical possibilities that are available to folks who want to have children. It made me a lot more precious over people who I know who are, you know, in the process of being pregnant or trying to have kids because there's so much care that’s just not given, and not just not given, but like refused, right? So not like people forget, like it's an accident, but it's very intentional. Or even I think about like I feel like something has been going around on Twitter recently is women talking about the things that happened to them when they gave birth that they didn't know would happened. And me making the connection that they don't know that that happened because it's something that we are deliberately shielded from, versus something that no one just wants to talk about, and it's very much like once I had a child and was like, Oh my God, why didn't anyone tell me this? I felt like I was like jumped into a secret society or something (laughs). Um, and that makes me think often about the fact that there are just so many people who have been living with like this consistent grief, and consistent trauma.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That makes so much sense, best. I feel like thinking about all of the things that have informed our ethic. And I think by nature, our ethic and politic informs our writing. I'm super excited to talk to Mia today. So I'm gonna get into this bio. Mia S. Willis is a Black queer poet, music producer, ooh I know that’s right, popular educator, and cultural worker from Charlotte, North Carolina. Mia has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, La Maison Baldwin, The Watering Hole, and Lambda Literary. A two-time Best of the Net nominee. They are the author of monster house, and the 2018 winner of the Cave Canem Chapbook Prize. Let's get into it best. 

Brittany Rogers

Yess.

[BACKGROUND MUSIC CONTINUES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hi Mia! We would be honored if you would start us off with a poem.

Mia S. Willis

So the first poem I'm going to share with y'all is a poem that I wrote back in the day in 2019 when I was living in Florida, which is a crazy place anyway, but I'm excited to share this a little bit with you. On December 7 2019, Georgian performance artist, David Datuna entered the Art Basel Miami exhibition, removed an artwork valued at $120,000 from the gallery wall, and ate it. This is an ode to the hungry artist, the “PARABLE OF THE GREAT BANQUET.” [Recites “PARABLE OF THE GREAT BANQUET.” (Recenter Press, 2020)]

mere days after we paid our respects to chairman fred

we sat on the stoop slack-jawed as a man ate a $120,000 banana

shook our heads and mused that “the hunger’s gonna kill us first.”

sixty-second science class at the self-checkout

appetite / like energy / cannot be lost / only change its form

so when my stomach pockets are empty, i bite the armani-gloved hand that feeds me. 

question: if the ancestors were sharecroppers living in eden on credit

what was the price of the apple?

question: if we still have not tired of tilling the fields without tasting the fruit

what is the value of our heads?

in the year of our lord two thousand and nineteen

jesus walks into / a brightly colored spectacle / peels forbidden yield

lets teeth break skin into bleeding / performs a miracle

then smiles as the centurions lead him away from shocked public

peace so still / it shows the cruelty in starving

commands its witnesses to go forth / multiply.

Brittany Rogers

I had to be like, Ajanaé, shhh (laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Britney definitely has, because I was, I was, I was over here I was about to hit you with the, go off!

Mia S. Willis

(Laughing) Thank you so much. Thank you. It was wild; like the fact that the, I mean, all the art piece was was like a banana taped to the wall. Like that was all it was, and like, David Datuna walks up to the banana, and peels it, and eats it. And he's like, you know, they're, he's trying to make some sort of grand point about how there are like houseless and unfed people outside of Art Basel Miami in droves, but like this is a $120,000 Banana. But the follow up to that story is that David Datuna now makes NFTs [non-fungible tokens] for Dole fruit company. 

[COLLECTIVE GASP]

Mia S. Willis

So (laughs) it's not really.

Brittany Rogers

(LAUGHS).

Mia S. Willis

He didn't really stand by the message (laughs) he started. He used it, and then he moved.

Brittany Rogers

How quickly the game switches when the coin is involved. 

Mia S. Willis

Exactly.

Brittany Rogers

How quickly. 

Mia S. Willis

That for me is like, that's what separates the theory and the praxis of a revolutionary act. Like you, you theorize that you were gonna, you know, upset a narrative, but then you actually didn't realize what the next step was, and so you ended up you know, sucking yourself into hyper capitalism even, even worse.

Brittany Rogers

Listen, because people love to say what they gone do, and then when we get there, and you know people, also includes me, I too have been that person who was like I would never, and then I got there and was like, damn, look at me nevering (laughs). 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm trying to figure out what NFTs Dole fruit company got. Is it? Is it, is it pictures of the mandarin orange cup? Like what is going on?

Mia S. Willis

You know, I try, I try not to trouble myself with thoughts like that. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Mia S. Willis

I truly do, I truly do. I try not to trouble myself but like, I mean, Dole is one of those companies where like, if you check out their supply chain, like the way it works, it's absolutely crazy. Like the pineapples are grown in Indonesia, and then packaged in Colombia, and then you know, redistributed all over the world like so you know, Dole is weird. It's possible that he's like doing NFTs to sort of, you know, with the fruit cups and whatnot, or it's also possible that he's trying to do some whole other revolutionary thing with it. So, we'll see. Let's, let's just see how that unfolds (laughs).

Brittany Rogers

I love how you say, “I don't trouble myself.” (laughs).

Mia S. Willis

I try not to. You know, life is really short, and my brain. My mind is an attic because you know, Sherlock Holmes says, there's finite space in here. I try not to trouble myself with that.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Some stuff you can't even give the time to occupy too much space. I have enough problems (laughs).

Brittany Rogers

Listen, I'm not finna let them worry me, because they will if I let them (laughs). So, what’s moving you these days, if not the NFT problems (laughs)? What are you moved by?

Mia S. Willis

Aw man, I'm moved by my communities these days. The pandemic really challenged me to connect with people intentionally, and make sure that I was creating art on purpose, and creating art that had a purpose outside of my own sort of practice or, as Baldwin would call it, finger exercise. You know, like I'm, I've been moved by like my, so my best friend in the world is Maya Williams, congratulations to y'all on your graduation from Randolph. Love to y’all.

Brittany Rogers

They are amazing! Omg! 

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Mia S. Williams

That’s my best friend! Like Maya and I went to college together. We're besties, we went to college together, we were there all four years, like, thick as thieves. And so I've been deeply moved, especially by the way that Maya has been bringing art, in the last few years, to new contexts, to incarcerated folks, to disabled folks, to traumatize people. Like I really, I’ve been really moved by that work, and the fact that Maya understands that you can't just write the poem, that you have to bring the poem to the people who need it. And you have to heal them in the way that they're looking for, and so that I'm definitely greatly moved by. My other best friend is Asia Bryant-Wilkerson, who is a poet, and a sculptor, and an all around brilliant individual. And so, I'm so deeply, deeply inspired and moved by the work that she does.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love Asia! Asia, wrote this sestina once, man, oh, my heart. I love Asia. 

Mia S. Willis

She's incredible. She, she pushes me, she pushes me to write what I mean. Like to say what I mean, and not apologize for it. You know, I tell her all the time that for her, it's an older poem, but “The Pot Calls the Kettle Black” is one of my favorite poems that she's ever written because she wrote a knife, like she wrote, you know, she wrote a blade on the page. And like, I'm so inspired by that. So I've been moved by my people, I've been moved by my community; Maya, Asia, Lindsay Young, who is doing some incredible work, like they're just some, I'm so blessed and privileged to have this chosen family of queer people around me that are pushing me forward, and challenging me every day to be better.

Brittany Rogers

I love know who people's best friends are. Because for me, I'm like, it paints such a full picture, right? Because now it's not just you, it’s you and your folks. And I'm like, Oh, that makes sense. I love when I see a bestie group, and I'm like, ahh, that makes lots of sense (laughs). All the pieces of the puzzle are cohesive. So that's really, really cool. I know, you mentioned that, like, your relationship with writing shifted over the pandemic. And I would love if you would talk more about how that's been for you, whether it's shifted, like in terms of form, in terms of practice, what's, what's different on this not quite other side of, of COVID?

Mia S. Willis

Well, so like, for context, I was on tour when COVID sort of hit the US. I was, I was in Seattle, on the Sister Spit 2020 tour, and sort of the news was rolling in like, oh, you know, these cases, they're, they're getting higher and higher. And, and I, I really didn't know what to do with myself, like I had, I had that tour, kind of that was my first West Coast tour, and I had that coming up, and then that got canceled, and then some really big, high paying gigs that I had got cancelled. And so I really had to reevaluate my definition of success. And like my definition of, of progress in my career, because, for me, like I was, I always thought that, like my Zenith would be that like, oh, I pay bills with poetry money, like, that's how I do it is that, you know, I don't, I don't have a second job, this is the job, you know, and that was always what I was striving to do. But then when the pandemic hit us full force, and sort of everything shut down for a while, and we were all sort of sheltering in place, I realized that, you know, I, in order to have that life, I would have to be gone six months out of the year, because I would have to tour, and then I would have to have at least one month of residency, which costs a whole bunch of money and, you know, so like, doing I realized like, actually, that's not the life I really want. I was living really fast because I was feeling a lot of pressure to succeed in the sort of, you know, manufactured ways, and the pandemic really was the time for me to stop and listen to myself and say like, Is this really what you want? Do you? Is this how you want people to hear you or feel you? And you love Beyoncé, but like you can't do 96 cities baby. Like that ain't you, you know, like, that's just not who you are. I did 15 cities in 2019, I think. And that was absolutely insane. Like I was ill after that, like I couldn't, I couldn't take care of myself. So I have been way more patient with myself, and with the work as a result of this crisis. I didn't force myself to write anything. If I wasn't really, really called to it, I stopped performing publicly. I really just sort of retreated inward in the interest of figuring out like, but no, who are you though? Like, not when other people are watching you? But like, who are you? And what do you want to say? And how do you want to go about this, this journey of being a poet? Because there's no right way to do it. And so that's, that's really what the pandemic awakened in me was, like, you've been on the right path, quote, unquote, and been very successful. But like, what if you trusted yourself to just chase what you want out of it? Like what you're looking for a new audience rather than a check, or like, you know, a challenging conversation rather than the dollar amount. So I’m so slow now, y'all (laughs). Like I write so slow, like being at Cave Canem this year was a real challenge for me like writing every day, writing something new and like, sharing it with people, like I'm moving so much slower, but with so much more intention, because I realized that, you know, my poetry failed me in a crisis time because it was dependent on the capitalism that was collapsing around it. And, and so I couldn't let my poetry fail me again. And I couldn't let my poetry fail anybody else that way again, so I'm slower, and more deliberate. I definitely have seen the value of revision. Shoutout to Airea D. Matthews.

Brittany Rogers

Listen, she’s a legend, you hear me! 

Mia S. Willis

Like, her workshop on like, classical revision is like, absolute brilliance. Like it's, it's brilliance. Talking about Catullus, and talking about revision, like, who are you Airea? Come on. 

Brittany Rogers 

A masterclass. Airea is amazing. 

Mia S. Willis

Right! She’s brilliant. I think, I think really, the pandemic changed my relationship to success, changed my relationship to progress, and growth in my career. And it also took the pressure off me to put my first book out. My first full length book has been done for a while, but I was definitely trying to get it out as soon as possible after winning Cave Canem Chapbook Prize. Like I was really putting a lot of pressure on myself, I was like, You got to strike when people are talking about you, you got to strike when the iron is hot, you know, let's get this book out right now right now. And you know, looking back on, it had to come out when when I wanted it to, you know, it probably wouldn't be the project that I'm proud of. So, I pulled the book and the pandemic, actually (laughs). I pulled, I pulled it from my publisher, because I was not really getting the editorial support I needed, which was sort of on their end, but they just didn't feel ready. And I didn't want to rush it. So I said, you know, let's, let's take a step back and make sure it's coming out at the right time. Because it does matter. It's important.

Brittany Rogers

I don’t want to be too personal, but I'm really intrigued by what you said about moving more into your interior self and like stopping performance. Me and Ajanaé both started with slam, and started in the performance world in a moving over I think or whatever moving over means because all of that subjective we know, right, but stopping performing, and writing strictly in a more like interior way for yourself, more patient, more deliberate. What did you find yourself most surprised by during that process?

Mia S. Willis

I definitely didn't realize how much grief I was moving through. So I, my oldest sister Brandy passed away in 2012 very suddenly, and I didn't really realize how much of that I was still moving through. She was 29. And I'm 26. And so you know, once I started slowing down, and writing more intentionally, and being more patient, like, I started to understand that that sense of running out of time, you know, obviously is a societally imposed one. Everybody feels like they're running out of time. But it also has a lot to do with that grief, and a lot to do with the fact that I felt like I was running out of time because I'm getting closer and closer to my sister's age. And so it just, it really enlightened me to the fact that I hadn't really been spending a lot of time listening to myself. I hadn't been spending a lot of time making space for me to feel my feelings, and I know that like sounds ridiculous, but like being in therapy has completely unlocked for me. 

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Shoutout to therapy! 

Mia S. Willis

Shoutout to therapy! Like everybody needs to talk to somebody, but it's completely unlocked for me like actually the reason you were running so hard, the reason that you were on tour for three months, and off for three months, and on for three months is because you were trying to outrun your own end, you know, you're you're trying to outrun it. And so it's, luckily it was, I started taking poetry back as a meditative practice. Kind of a way to spend time with myself, a way to listen to myself, which is what I really believe meditation is for me. And yeah, I was surprised to see how frequently I was writing about my sister, how frequently she was showing up, like, she shows up in my work, you know, in other places, but I was like, wow, like Brandy really wants to speak here. Like, she really wants me to talk to her. And I haven't, I haven't talked to her intentionally or acknowledged her intentionally in a while. I sort of put that away. But the very first poems I ever wrote were epistolary poems to her like, so you know, I felt myself returning to that of like, this, this act of patience and kindness and love that is writing poetry intentionally, when it comes to you, is actually an extension of that loving relationship, and you shouldn't shy away from.

Ajanaé Dawkins

One of the things that I'm thinking about, and appreciate you talking about therapy, and then also like poetry working as a meditative practice. And also this idea of reassessing where poetry was becoming like a barrier, or a space for you at the beginning of the pandemic, because I feel like a lot of us had to almost reassess ourselves. And honestly, the things that you're saying, they sound radical in the way that we think about things, because I think so many people are just like, I have to get that book out. So the idea to like, have had a book in progress, and to get it pulled, or to like make the decision, make the conscious decision to pull it for your own ethics, for your own self care, for your own, just understanding what you deserve. I'm wondering, do you feel like your concern for who your work is arriving to has shifted from like other folks to yourself? And like, how was concern for audience?

Mia S. Willis

I think my answer is yes, and no, in that I definitely, it allowed me to differentiate the poetry that I was writing for myself, versus the poetry that I was writing for other people. Like, I have a keener eye on what I do now. And, and so like, the joke sometimes is like, not everything in the workshop has to go in the journal, right (laughs)? Like, not everything that you write has to get published. And I got a greater sense of that, over the course of this time, that like, I don't have to share everything. In fact, there are some poems that I wrote over the pandemic that no one will ever see, but me, because that's not the point, you know, I wrote the poem to feel the feeling. And now that I have felt the feeling, I don't necessarily need other people to see that, or be spectators to that. So it did sort of allow me to spirit away a little bit of my, my poetry loves. To lock it up and sort of keep it just for me, in a new way. But I also felt just so driven by my audiences to speak, and so driven by my audiences to write intentionally. You all, you all come, I mean we're slam-ily, like you know this.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I know the vibes. 

Mia S. Willis

Like, when you write for scores, like you're going to war like this is, this is you're waging war against other folks with the art and like, when I moved from performance to you know, more page poetry, I definitely had to stop competing (laughs) and figure out you know, who am I competing against? Who is actually watching, because slam your audience can be anybody, but you know, on the page, you got to lead people to where you want them to go. So I think the answer is yes and no. Like, I think the pandemic definitely gave me the awareness of the, the interior self and saying, like, you know, there are poems that you can write for you, and no one has to see them, and they can just be your sweet, beautiful poems. I have some kwansabas that like I love a lot that I haven't put out anywhere just because I like them, they’re for me. 

Brittany Rogers

Can you elaborate? What's a kwansaba?

Mia S. Willis

Yeah, kwansaba. So I discovered this poetry form years ago and started and tried to teach it in every form workshop that I could teach it in. But basically, it's a it's a poetry form that was created by Eugene Redmond in ‘95, which is the year I was born, which is why I try to do it. (Inaudible). Okay, I try to I try to do it not not to be me.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Shoutout to ‘95 babies. Gang, gang. 

Mia S. Willis

Right! We are the best. Quite literally though, kwansaba means first fruit in Swahili. And basically it's created after the Nguzo Saba of Kwanzaa. So it's a praise poem. It's an African, Black praise poem, and it's a septastich. So it's seven lines, seven words in each line, and no word exceeds seven letters. So there's no rhyme scheme rule, there's no like concrete, you know, in terms of visual rules or anything like that. But those are the only ones. Seven lines, seven words in each line, no word exceeding seven letters. You will be surprised at how your joy responds to that container. Like how your praise responds to that container, because we're, we're so you know, Black people, we’re so boundless in the way that we experience praise, and love, and appreciation to one another. And so like when you try to funnel that down into a really specific form, in the form of the kwansaba, like you really get to the meat of what you want to say. Your words are so, so much more heightened, and important in that form. And that's why I love it.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I literally just wrote that down, because I'm about to go back and try it. I'm literally about to go back and try this form. I was super excited when I was looking at some of your work because I saw you had also written a bop, and I was like you better be doing a Black form! And I just, I love the consistency of who you are. I also appreciate your comment about when you're writing for slam you're writing to go like, you're writing to go to war, and you're writing with the preparation of this work is competing against another thing. And I don't think that's something, I think I've thought about a lot of things about the transition on a performance, but not about the transition out of, I am not competing against my peers, I'm like my work is now existing in a larger conversation, in a larger ecosystem as opposed to my work being competition, something that I'm really interested in, and I'm thinking about this, especially as you're bringing up these, like Black forms, is the way your work confronts the concept of the ivory tower, or the ivory tower. And its impact on our language, on our politics, on the way we assimilate. And I was wondering if you could talk more about the process of like growing in your personal craft, while also preserving the culture of your language?

Mia S. Willis

Word, yeah, I mean, so I think an important context here is that like I was an archaeologist before. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Ooooh!

Brittany Rogers

Interesting!

Mia. S. Willis

That's what I was trained in. I went to school for classical archaeology, specifically Roman Archaeology outside of Rome. So I did my fieldwork in Bulgaria, actually, and got to see some incredible things. But my relationship to my language is, is so conditioned by my experience as an archaeologist. Like by my experience as someone who works in material culture, and language, to me is a material culture. I don't like the fact that Boaz, Franz Boaz separates it, when he separates into the four fields of anthropology, he separates archaeology and linguistics. And I don't necessarily, I don't necessarily agree that that's, right. Because I do think language is a material culture. You build things with language, you can touch it, you can, you know, feel it, you know, it is definitely there. But I think when I started moving through these archaeological programs, and seeing the ways that we were talking about cultures that were long dead, as though we really did know them, as though they really could speak to us, that's when I sort of started, I decided, you know, how do I want people to talk about me in the future? Do I want them to be able to talk in my voice? Do I want them to be able to speak in my grammar, you know, how do I want to be seen or read in the future? And I returned to poets like Sonia Sanchez, you know, and people who are writing in a dialect of their time, right, and trying to preserve that particular pattern of speech or way of speaking. And I was really fascinated just by the bricks of Black language, and the fact that we do have rules, we do have bounds within the language that makes sense, you know. People, white people, mess up the habitual be all the time. It be kickin’ they ass. 

Brittany Rogers

Everytime!

[ALL LAUGHING]

Mia S. Willis

And I don’t understand! I don't get it! To me, it doesn't really, it doesn't really seem that hard, but again, because you know, there are Africanisms, in our language, like, you know, I just, it it feels like I have a duty to point out all the ways in which language connects us, both materially, and spiritually ,because we will lose it. The way that Latin becomes a dead language is because people stop speaking it and only writing it, and it gets locked away from the people, it gets, you know, it's it's now the language of the papacy, and it's now, you know, it's like this very kind of loftier language, and given elevated to this pedestal when in Rome, everybody spoke Latin, like, you know, like, there might have been some slang, there might have been some dirty jokes or anything like that, but like everybody spoke, you know, Latin, maybe with an accent or with a dialect or whatever. So, to me that's like the same thing of if we don't keep, if I don't keep writing about my language, if I don't keep writing about how I use it to love people, how I use it to hold them accountable, how I use it to water them, then that practice will also disappear, in addition to the language, how you use the language disappears, too. So I definitely feel it's a duty for me to keep writing about how my language works, to keep not decoding it for white people, but showing, you know, Black people like, this is how our language works. It's not thrown together, it's not slapdash, it's not a degradation of other languages. But in fact, like, what we do with it makes it new, you know, what we do with it makes it revolutionary. So I think that's my responsibility as a poet, particularly as a Black one, to talk to Black people about the way we actually exist, the way we actually talk, and about how the society has conditioned the way we talk to each other. And I'm thinking particularly of, I have a poem, a descriptive grammar about gender, and descriptive grammars are supposed to tell you or explain to you how a word is used in the language. It's not supposed to define it for you, but it's supposed to explain like, here's how a word comes to mind, comes to exist and, and Blackness and gender, you know, I love talking about that conversation about how Blackness is in conversation with gender all the time. And the fact that there is evidence of, you know, Black a-gender identity, or bi-gender identity or transgender identity historically, and also in the present. But that the way we talk to one another, actually shows our understanding of gender, just the the way that we speak, you know. The the fact that boy, B O Y, and boy, B O I are pronounced the same, they're homophones, but the context changes completely, depending on who you're talking to, so. The fact that I can say like, I could say to you now, like, Ajanaé, you got me bent. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. Like, and you know, that you should probably give me my space, you know, or like (laughs). I think regularly, since I am from the south, and like, since I, you know, grew up around Southern Black women, like I have a lot of phrases that I'll say in conversation that people don't understand. They have no clue what I'm talking about. They're like, bro, where did you even get that from? Like, I told somebody the other day that they look, rode hard and rolled up wet.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing).

Mia S. Willis

And they didn't know what that meant! And I was like, Oh, I'm sorry. Like, let me, let me go back or like, you know, my grandma would say, it’s so quiet out here, you could hear a rat pissin’ on cotton. Like, whoa, what? (Laughing). Like, you know, so like,it's material culture, because they come out of particular circumstances. Like, you know, my family, like I come from sharecroppers. I come from eastern North Carolina, tobacco fields, and cotton, so like a rat pissin’ on cotton's very real. It's like a utilitarian sound, you know. it doesn't come out of nowhere, so it's things like that that sort of awakened me to the fact that, no language is material because it's a response to your circumstances. You're building a tool, something to capture or render the the way that you're experiencing the world. To me, it's as versatile, and as necessary as a hammer, or anything else.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) I love the imagery (laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Our running joke is that Brittany (laughs), Brittany be having these sayings that you would hear your grandma, but they're paired with very like modern, like, AIN’T NO FUN WHEN THE RABBIT GOT THE GUN! Like, Brittany, what are you talking about? (Laughing).

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). Cause it ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun. So my family lives in Detroit. My granny is from Georgia. My grandfather is from South Carolina. My mother has moved back to Alabama since, and I was raised in matriarchy. So I tell people a lot of the time I'm not, I'm a Granny's girl. I'm not a mama’s or daddy’s girl, I'm a Granny's girl, right. So that's who I grew up sittin’ up under. So I say everything my granny say (laughs). And quite frankly, so does my mother, right. So we have this language that's very Detroit, but also very Southern. Because that's what you know, migration will do for you (laughs), so. 

Mia S. Willis

Yess!

Brittany Rogers

So I use their phrases in conversation all the time. And the number of times that Ajanaé has said to me like, girl, what are you talking about? And I'm like, what do you mean you don’t know what that mean (laughs)? My mama don't say (laughs) the one that you said your granny said, my mama say, you like who shout John?

Mia S. Willis

Oooh, yo! Yo, all the time. Used to hear that all the time.

Brittany Rogers

But also, very much the rat pissin’ on cotton very much um (sighs). Yeah, people don't say that? Yo mama don’t say that? People be like, no, my mama don’t say that (laughs). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

And I think it is, even if my people do say it, my grandmother says it. So I just be like Brittany, the only person I've ever heard say that like (laughs). 

Brittany Rogers

It’s a shared thing (laughs). But I also think our people speak in proverbs in so many ways. And I think that's a pass down like shared language for me. And sometimes it is the quickest way to explain a thing in that proverb, like in that, I don’t know.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Like, ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun?

Brittany Rogers

Cause it’s not (laughs). 

Mia S. Willis

It be that way, sometimes.

Brittany Rogers

I’m thinking even when you're talking about like language as a tool, I think it’s also a marker of context, right? Like, even if we're thinking about our more modern form of slang, you know, where somebody from by what they, what they say. So it not only situates me in like your identity, or your culture, it also situates me in your locale, like where you're from, or depending on what you say, I'm like, Okay, you might be from here, but I know your people are from this other space. I think I saw a Twitter, a tweet once that said, Detroit niggas is just like Alabama niggas in buffs.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Mia S. Willis

Yeah, yeah, mhmm. Shol is, shol is! Shol is. Like, for real. Like, I definitely, I definitely can tell where different poets are from based on the way that they situate themselves, linguistically. So that is a hot button situation for slam communities, because quite frequently, you know, you got people using slang, or words, or things that are not necessarily their’s (laughs). That they, that they believe are universal Black phrases, but in fact, are like Southern Black phrases, or Midwestern Black phrases. And like, you know, you're combining all of these different geographies in one poem, and we're like, bro, but where are you from though?

Brittany Rogers

Because that don’t match (laughs). When I hear somebody say, what up though, I'm like, Oh, you're from Detroit, or you're trying to, you're trying to let me know you got people in Detroit or something, but if it’s not one of those things, I’m like, why you say that? (Laughs). 

Mia S. Willis

Right, so I definitely agree with you that it's an indicator sort of, of context and geographical context, excuse me. But yeah, I agree. And that's part of the reason why I find it so important as a southern Black writer, specifically, to capture that and say, like, but actually, the southern Black experience isn't the Black experience. And I want to capture that uniquely, you know, and be true to that, and honest to that, because that's where I come from. 

Brittany Rogers

People get real weird about the South in a way that I'm like, Oh, that's so anti Black; y’all gotta cut that out. Y’all gotta cut that out. So I want to go back to something that you said kind of in our pre conversation, and hinted at a little bit earlier when we're thinking about breaking down, or intentionally preserving language, and honing in on audience, and kind of abandoning like the performance of our art and moving into the interiority of it as a space of like anarchy, and as a space of uprooting capital. And I would love to hear you talk more about how you feel like Black anarchy shows up in our poetics, in our politics, in our culture, right. And we're thinking about language as like a contextual marker. Right? How does Black anarchy coincide or show up there?

Mia S. Willis

Yeah, yeah. So um, I'm one who, as an anti-capitalist, I feel like if you're anti-capitalism, you're anti-capitalism in all its forms. And that is what anarchism is, is sort of abolishing those oppressive forms, like legal and school systems, mass media, bureaucracy, like all of these things that draw their power from capitalism and Black people, particularly in the hip-hop art form and poetry, like we evolve ahead often of capitalism. So much so that capitalism has to catch up to us. So the example that I use frequently is hip-hop, because I feel like that's the best one. But actually, you know, without the blackout, right, without this, without the New York City blackout, we don't get hip-hop, without people robbing stores, quite literally, looting stores in New York City, we don't get hip-hop. Like so, we had to do something illegal to make a new art form. And now we're out here playing music in public places, we're reimagining what it means to recontextualize old songs and put them into new songs and, and now suddenly, you know, bands like The Turtles, who don't even own their catalog, are all up in arms about the fact that you sampled them, and they don't have any quote unquote legal recourse or anything like that. And so you're just worried about pushing the art forward. You don't really care about you know, these these turtle guys like, you heard a riff. Yeah llike, you don't really care about that. You heard a riff, you heard a baseline, you heard drums, you heard something that spoke to you when you stole it. And isn't that like, to me, the greatest example of our survival, the fact that like you heard something that stayed with you, you heard a beat, you heard something and you said, no, no, I have to lay hands on it, and make it new. I have to lay hands on it and, and love it into something else. And so like that, for me is the anarchism of Blackness in general. Marquis Bey speaks about this way more eloquently than I do. But you know, the anarchism of Blackness in and of itself. Zoé Samudzi, William C. Anderson, these are all people who speak about this, but like, we are constantly in opposition to capitalism in our culture, and we are constantly creating new ways to resist in our culture, whether or not that is, you know, whether or not that is like, modifying street bikes, and racing, you know, and racing down the strip, like, you know, or whatever. Like, whether it's, and all these things we know, are illegal, whether it's graffiti art, you know, whether it's, you know, having pop up cookouts, or block parties, like we are so bent on being together, and on surviving, on making it through it, that we are willing to sort of take, steal spirit away, recontextualize almost anything in order to, in order to continue to build that culture forward, and enrich the collective.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think that's fascinating. And it kind of brings us to our next question, which is about who informs your work? So we asked this of everybody, which is, if you had to choose three people who of any genre, anything, who you were like, we would have to look at what they do in order to like, understand how you got here, or what you do, who would those people be? And when I say any genre, I mean, if you got a blunt roller, and you like, you would have to look at how this person artistically roll these blunts in order to understand how I wrote that bop, you can list that person. 

Mia S. Willis

Word, I would say, people who want to understand my work, my dad. Llike, I mean, my dad is from Monmouth County, New Jersey, shout out to Monmouth County, and he's a legend up there. Like he's a legend everywhere. But like, my dad is just someone who has taught me to appreciate, to appreciate the fragility of life, and also question as much authority as possible that tries to rip you away from that fragility or alienate you from it. And so that, I definitely would say my dad first. The other two are poets, I promise, but I gotta give love to my dad.

[ALL LAUGHING]

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Mia S. Willis 

The other two are poets like, but my dad definitely like, I learned so much about my philosophy of living from my father, my father's attitude about living. I think the other person is James Baldwin, I feel and have felt kinship with James Baldwin for years since I was in high school, and hadn't come out yet, and was still you know, little, little baby gay me with the braces and like, you know, not, not really, not really sure of myself yet. And, and Jimmy was the one to sort of say to me, like, but nah, like, you got it though. Like you, you, you know who you are. And so you just got to live through it. You just got to live to see who you're going to be. And it's going to be worth it. So I think Jame,s James Baldwin taught me how to write about hope without sacrificing the stakes, how to write about joy without sacrificing the stakes, and keeping, how to keep my people close, in text. I’m thinking particularly of Sonny's Blues and how he talks about like, the frustration of coaxing music from an instrument, and like how that, that must be what writing is, like, you know, that must be you know, like you're, you're so you're so like, intent on getting the right notes out of the piano, and how that is a really great analog for poetry. So definitely James Baldwin, I think and then my last person would probably be June Jordan. I think of her often, and I returned to her often, because she had such a great understanding of the politics of her moment, and how to create a revolutionary poem. Her praxis was just I mean, her George Washington Carver poem, like gives me chills, and like it's a persona poem. Like you're, you're not, it can be, it can read a little impenetrable to people who are not familiar with what she's trying to do. But you know, the way that she takes a well known story, or a well understood narrative and sort of subverts it, and creates a new context for it is, is really what I strive for my work, to point out the fallacies, to point out the cracks in this reality. And to say, but like, aren't we still here? Like, isn't that, isn't that dope? You know, like, like, like, we, it's all cracking around us, and crackling around us. But she was able to sort of take our hands and say, but but we are here, you know, this is the eye of the storm. And we have a duty to report from the eye. What it is that we see. So yeah, those three dad, Jimmy and June, that'd be a heck of a dinner party! (Laughing). A heck of dinner party. Usually, usually, Fun fact, when people ask me, like, if you could have dinner with any, however many people alive or dead, like, who would you choose? Usually my dad is in there. And so whenever I'm nervous, and like, I'll clam up at the table, because I'm like, Oh, my God, it's Nina Simone or Beyonce or whoever, you know, at the table. I can rely on my dad to say, So Nina, I love this album of yours. And you know, we should talk about, like he's that guy who like wants you to have an experience of the conversation and being included, even if you feel like timid, or even if you feel like you shouldn't step forward. And so like, I know that I would get more out of the conversation, and feel more comfortable if my dad was there.

Brittany Rogers

I, this so wholesome (laughs). This is the content that we come for. 

Mia S. Willis

I'm glad (laughs). I'm glad I could give the people what they want you. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Rogers

And are giving! 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

We’re gonna take this time to take a break! Even, I'm saying, do whatever you need to do. Go to the bathroom, drink some water or whatever, and we'll come back (voice fades). 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

So today, we're going to play a game called This VS That.

Mia S. Willis

(Gasps). Yes. 

Brittany Rogers

This VS That is a game where we put two things against each other, and we ask you to tell us who would win in a fight, and why? So essentially, you got to tell us who got the hands, who gone win, and why they have them. Right, like, walk us through your logic. Alright, you ready?

Mia S. Willis

Hit me.

Ajanaé Dawkins

The habitual be…

Brittany Rogers

Is in one corner.

Mia S. Willis

Uh-huh, yes. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Versus Black colloquial proverbs. 

Mia S. Willis

Oh noo.

Ajanaé Dawkins

(Laughing). Listeners, I wish you could see Mia’s face right now.

Mia S. Willis

This feels like a trap to me. Um, okay, y'all, y'all gave me a trick question right out the gate. Okay, alright, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to talk it out like Pay Sajak say on The Wheel of Fourtune,I’ma talk it out. So I’m gonna have to talk it out. So the habitual be for me, like when I imagine that individual personified, like, that's somebody who eats walk in tacos with flaming hot Doritos. Like that’s somebody who like, you know, that's somebody who's a little dangerous, like someone who's, someone who like has spikes on their clothing, like intentionally in, in 2022! Yeah, like, like, you know, like, like, and so that person to me, you're right. Like that person is used to being misunderstood. That person is used to being pigeon holed in places they don't need to be, so like they know how to fight. The habitual be has hands, that I know. I, I do know, the habitual be also, in my mind, has an undercut. So I don't know if that's important or not, but an undercut for the habitual be, but Black Proverbs, I feel, I feel too much love when I think about them. And not to say that they're soft, but I feel too much tenderness. Like in Black Proverbs, because it's about wisdom. It's about like sharing wisdom. And sometimes you can impart wisdom with hands. I've respect that. Like, I do think it's possible. But I don't think hands are the best way to impart wisdom. And so I think I'm gonna have to go with the habitual be. She seems, she seems dangerous. She seems like I wouldn't want to run up on her in the dark. 

Brittany Rogers

Interesting.I love these personas. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I also love the idea that hands can impart wisdom because you know, a lesson can be learned! (Laughs).

Mia S. Willis

Look, what I tell people all the time, I say it all the time! And it's a quote from Fight Club. Like how much can you know about yourself if you ain’t never been in a fight? 

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). Very little! 

Mia S. Willis

How much do you know yourself?! Like you, you learn a lot about yourself real fast when fists start flyin’!

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

Okay, okay. What you think? The habitual be got it? 

Mia S. Willis

I think the habitual be got it, yeah. 

[CROWD CHEERING SOUND EFFECT]

Brittany Rogers

Alright, okay. You heard it here, folks. The habitual be got them hands, and that undercut. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Period. 

Mia S. Willis

Got it. Be careful! Tip toe, okay. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

So the plot twist about winning the game is that we win, because you get to read us another poem, and we get to enjoy it! (Laughing). So that is how we close this whole thing up, so (laughing). I would love to celebrate our win personally by asking you to honor us with one more poem. 

Mia S. Willis

Yeah, totally!Okay, um, I wrote a poem in 2020. It was one of the only ones I wrote. It is a tattered flag. So it is a poetry form, a visual poetry form that I sort of created while I was at the ​​DreamYard's Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium learning from amazing people like Kamilah Aisha Moon, may she be resting peacefully, and Denice Frohman, Nate Marshall, these incredible minds, but they challenged me really to sort of create a visual poetry form that I felt really pushed my art forward. So I created the tattered flag, which is two stories of liberation told simultaneously. And so this poem is called “Juneteenth.” It's a tattered flag. [Recites “JUNETEENTH.” (Palette Poetry, 2020)]

“Small ordinary acts can be the portals through which meaning is made.”

-Denice Frohman

the man asks “what do you know about freedom?”

so i tell him how i came out to my grandmother.

say “i am more intriguing than the violence done to me.”

then i tell him how i wish i could be honest with my mother about my credit history. 

or anything that means anything at all. 

and i explain how i talk about my father more than i talk to him

because “what surprise could a raindrop ever bring the ocean?”

and i explain how i never wonder if my partner loves me

when there are biscuits in the house. 

only when the man turns to walk away

do i approach

the truth 

is that i was born under a north carolina wind bloated with acid

where woman forge brave lacquered armor of constraint / scabbards full of toil

slack and useless simplicity clearing loose soil from the excavation

blood spent so lavishly on an empty landscape 

in my house 

in my mother’s house

in my mother’s mother’s house 

a slapdash driftwood body / charybdis waves / guileful / tempestuous

i taught myself to read the gusts by pricking my ears to their howl

thus far the only transliteration that fills this sail of billowing skin 

when i say “all the black folks here are smiling”

i mean “humans are the only species for which baring teeth is a sign of benevolence.” 

i mean “ain’t it funny how enamel ain’t bulletproof but we crouch behind it anyway?”

when i say “all the black folks here are smiling”

i mean “all the black folks here are alive 

and as soft as water

and eager to stay.” 

Ajanaé Dawkins

If I could, I would throw something at you. 

Mia S. Willis

(Laughing). That's high praise. That's high praise. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I would just (sigh).

Brittany Rogers

(Inaudible) the title of something, you know.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That's definitely a title.

Mia S. Willis

Yo, I feel you. I'm a file that away.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs). Thank you so much for allowing us to interview you [background music cues], and being so generous with your time, and with your brilliance, we so appreciate it. 

[MUSIC GROWS LOUDER]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Grateful as hell. 

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

I think my favorite part of that interview is listening to the way that Mia talks about language. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes. 

Brittany Rogers

As both like this material thing, and also about Proverbs in their timelessness. And it really just has me thinking about the way that like Black languages, both so wildly consistent, but then also so very, like flexible, and ever changing.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think my favorite part is hearing Mia talk about re-imagining, or aligning their values in regards to their art, and determining what is important. I don't know, I just feel like I feel like so much of getting older has been reconciling what I thought was important with what's actually important.

Brittany Rogers

Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That really struck with me, and how that then shifts or shapes my dreams as I get older. So hearing talk…

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Brittany Rogers

Ou, best, cut it out. You about to have me thinking too deep over here. Cut it out!

Ajanaé Dawkins

(Laughing).

Brittany Roger

I don’t want another thing to shift, okay. I have no time for anymore shifting.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best, I hate to break to you, I hate to break it to you. I mean, just buckle up buttercup, because we in this.

[BOTH LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

So, in this vein, I think I want to ask you, what's, what's a myth that you believed about your writing that has been proven untrue the deeper you move into, like, this literary landscape writing world?

Brittany Rogers

That's a really good question. I think the thing that's most true is that I don't think I believe that I could sustain a writing practice, and sustain a life that centered me being a writer, um, in the way that it does now. So I think, before when I approached writing, it wasn't, I wouldn't say I was invested, because I very much was. But I think that the stakes in some ways felt lower because I think, I convinced myself that it was like going to be a hobby, or that it had to be this thing that I used to do, that I kind of was still dabbling in. But I wouldn't have called it the thing that I do, right? Like if people asked what I did, like, I'm a teacher, and I'm a mom, but I wouldn't have put writer there. And I certainly wouldn't have put writer first. And then I think the more that I, the more that I continue to write, the more that I continue to be with community, I think doing that helped me consider new possibilities, I think, and gave me, I don't know, I think gave me a vision and a language for what could be possible. I think watching other poets who have children, and who have like, very full lives thriving, and, you know, said industry was also really instrumental towards me being like, oh, no, actually, you can do this. And I think even more than like, you can do this, I think I looked up one day and was like, Oh, this is what you do! Like, maybe you are not trying to be a writer, or, you know, technically I'm a writer, but I really don't get a chance to write all that much. I was like, oh, no, this is really, this is your career. And this is in fact, the thing that you do. And more than that, like the person that you are. So that's, that's different. What about you, best? Y’all should see the way she lookin’ at me (laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

If I could translate looks through this microphone!

Brittany Rogers

You've seen me through a lot of errors, best. The number of times Ajanaé has been like (inaudible) can you believe that I got into that residency?! And she's like, yeah, what are you talking about? I’m like, wow, they read my poems! And they like them! And she’s like, because you're a poet, like, what are you talking about? So.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And the poems been fire! And that's the real tea. That’s what folks got out of it. That’s what folks got. Been a writer. Been writing. 

Brittany Rogers

Best, what's your myth (laughs)? Please and thank you.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think, I think my myth is, has been coming to understand myself not as like a solitary voice. I think when I was younger, especially because I came into writing so young, I like believed, I don't know if I had, I don't know if that it was a theory formed in my mind. But I know, I believed that I was like, the solitary voice in a space like it was me, and my art, and I read other poets, and that was them and their art. And when I write now, and when I think about my work, now, I'm always thinking about the collective voice. I'm thinking about how this voice is connected to this voice over here, that's still alive. Like I look at some of the work I was writing, even in college. And I'm like, Baby, you ain't even read James Baldwin, but you're referencing him? Like, you don't even know, you ain't never even read The Fire Next Time! You don't even know it. And I just don't think, I think I have, I don't see the place of studying both what's happening in contemporary, in the contemporary landscape, and, like, the folks that have come before us, as like, okay, I'm studying because like, you know, that's what you're supposed to do. But I'm like, it's, it's all a collective voice. It's all a collective chat, there is no individual voice. There is no individual idea. There is no something that just came into my brain. There is all of these folks, some people who aren't even writers who are a part of this collective voice. And so I just don't think I see myself as an individual anymore, and not in like a weird identity way. But does that make sense? Am I making sense or I'm sounding wild?

Brittany Rogers

No, you're not sounding wild. That makes perfect sense. I think it points to the question that we love to ask folks, right. Who informs you so deeply that other people have to study the,?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes. And I think, you know, I'm, you know, you know, I have a church girl (inaudible). I'm a Pentecostal girl so I be real spiritual. Because I also think like, is like, who would I have to tell, but also like, again, I stand by that there are voices that I was in communication with, by way of the spirit before I even knew, you know, before I even knew or came into, you know, before I even came into contact with them in my study. So yeah, that's it. That's my heart. 

Brittany Rogers

I like that answer, best. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Is there anybody you’d like to thank today?

Brittany Rogers

During my last labor, there was this amazing Black midwife who ended up delivering my son, and I don't know where she is in the world right now, but that woman was absolutely like an angel. I was definitely on like day two or three of like active labor. It was convinced that they was finna start doing strange stuff to me (laughs). And she came in on like the middle of the night shift, and was like, you want to have this baby tonight? And I was like, yes! And she was like, okay, do everything I say. And I was like, Yes, ma'am. And sure enough, like three hours before his shift was over. So she was ahead of time, like, she had my back. And this was during, this was September of 2020. So I don't even think that I have like, stopped to process how terrifying that time was for real. And I'm not about to do it now either (laughs). But I just remember feeling so, so afraid. And things were like, so much more complicated than they had ever been, both with my body, and with the state of health. And I was in there with just one person because it was September of 2020. And that lady, listen, she did what had to be done. So, thank you to her!

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that. This was with the most recent one, right?

Brittany Rogers

The one that you was FaceTiming me for in the middle of the night (laughs). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

(Laughing). We had to make sure everything was good baby! I want to let the people know. I don't care I'm in another state. I'm watching.

Brittany Rogers

Thought you was gone bully the nurses via the phone. (Laughing). Who are you thanking today, best? 

Ajanaé Dawkins

So I'm gonna thank, she's a tik-toker, she might never hear this. I do not know her in real life. But her name is Alexis Nicole. And she lives in Ohio. And she's a Black forger. And she's so fascinating. And her and a handful of other Black girls have opened, like my mind, heart to thinking about my ethics and practice around environmental justice. And, and, you know, listener, no judgement, but I think like, the idea is like Black people, you know, we don't really mess with nature. And I just dawned on me that that could impact our relationship to environmental justice. The Black environmental justice baddies are out here, and so I want to thank her, and the other Black girls on Tiktok doing the environmental justice work, and educating us. They found us (inaudible) with no uh, with no toxins! I said I know that’s right!

[BACKGROUND MUSIC CUES]

Brittany Rogers

Oh, wait a minute. I'ma get that from you. I'ma get that from you later. 

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

Okay, we wouldl also love to give thank yous to Dani, and the staff at Bravo Ocean Studios, the Poetry Foundation, Itzel Blancas, Ydalmi Noriega, Elon Sloan, Cin Pim, and Ombie Productions. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Please like, rate, and subscribe wherever it is you listen to podcasts.

Brittany Rogers

And on that note, until next time, folks. 

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Bye!

[MUSIC CONTINUES]