Nap Unleashed
This portfolio comes from a book of photographs by Sandro Miller titled Crowns: My Hair, My Soul, My Freedom, which will be published in December 2021 by Skira. The book also features a crown of sonnets by Patricia Smith, who is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
In its beginning, earth was fractured, frail
with coveting, and could not wait for us—
so, flailing in the muscled clutch of grace,
we blessed this sullen place. As we were born
and born again, in tenements and lush,
exuberant savannas, flung from hips
of southern silver, lifted into life
while mamas shrieked and swore, as we were born
and born again, emphatic, snared within
our thrash and wail, our breath already slowed
by blood’s incessant question in our chests,
every dazzled witness rose to name
us yet again. The world was not prepared.
Inside its realm, no one could fathom us.
Inside its realm, no one could fathom us—
we brazen through their shuttered doors, we huge
inside their throats, we necessary storm,
our newborn crowns smeared flat with blood, so hot
against our little heads. The white mistake
was thinking that, once rinsed and blotted dry,
the clenched, rebellious snarl was simply hair
with nothing more to say. They saw instead
the way our skin corrals and guzzles sun,
our breathlessness, our legendary hips,
they saw what commerce needed them to see—
our backs grown wide and measured for the want
of work. They missed the hurricane of hair,
the springing from a thousand wicked roots.
That springing from a thousand wicked roots
was just the brash beginning, just the bray
of light that hisses warning—Do not touch
this hair. This vibing wire, these bellowed threads
of thundering, no, do not dare to poke
a prying finger into dark you do
not understand. Our hair is blade when we
decide that it should be—the fools who died
within its kink would speak of smother if
they could. Our hair is not your savior. Not
your kumbaya, your ticket in. When it
began, so smashed and sleek with blood, we knew
that it had fist. Our hair can’t be polite.
Once we were slaves. Our hair was furious.
Once we were slaves. Our hair was furious,
forever springing loose from plaits and bows,
rejecting homemade greases meant to tame
the wild and wiry bloom that snapped its bands
and leapt alive at every chance. At least
some part of us was running free, like flame
that hungers for a sky, like praying fixed
on someplace we knew heaven was. We sang
our songs but didn’t move our mouths, we burned
to black inside ourselves. With rivers as
our mirrors, we began to build a wall
between our stolen air and us. We snapped
our dresses to our throats, made sure our hair
was braided thick against the spit of men.
Hair braided thick against the spit of men,
we hurtled forth—for years, we mystified
the whisper-tressed, but listened when they said
that we were wrong, not white or silk enough,
and that we’d never be unless we walked
into the fire, succumbing to a hate
we’d hoarded for ourselves. Because they loved
their blemished daughters, mamas twisted knobs
on cranky ovens, conjured flame, and made
us sit on rusted, wobbling kitchen chairs
beneath the ironing comb that charred our necks,
beneath the lye that chewed at scalp and root,
and we endured that hurt, forgot the days
our chaos crown had bellowed, nap unleashed.
Our crown still fought to bellow, nap unleashed,
though it was wounded, hammered down with heat
and oil that stank of animals and flowers,
although we wept while memorizing pale
and wispy heads in magazines. We gazed
and learned to suffer poisons to correct
our ugly, free us from the blunder of
ourselves. And as we listened, reaching up
to touch a stranger’s head—a stranger head—
with strands that disappeared us, trapped us in
their strangling glamor, we remembered this—
that we are people destined to explode.
So we exploded toward ourselves again.
When we explode, we know ourselves again,
we shake our funky, liberated heads,
and raise our voices to the rafters—Do
not dare touch these crowns. And we are Accra,
and we are Alabama, Brooklyn, Watts,
and we are middle finger lifted toward
the seething witnesses to all this joy,
and we are Trinidad and Harlem, we
are bopping straight into the yesterday
we were, and straight into the history
we’ve made and straight into tomorrow with
our rampant naps so gleefully unchecked,
so unrestrained, entwined ’til we become
a single soul, yet none of us the same.
A single soul, yet none of us the same,
we are the only government we need—
our vivid, cocky crowns stunned in their tilt
and swirl, they devastate and irritate,
they be our gospel, be our calling card,
they be our halo, be the way we reach
for sky. The crown is ours to snip or dye
a hundred awkward hues, it’s ours to tuck
beneath a Sunday hat, to crimp and twist,
to scissor down to air, much like a man’s.
This hair is all our other breath. It’s art
upon our heads, a glory spill. It’s wild,
bewildering and sexy in its snarl,
it’s neon, razored, locked and knotted, looped
and neon, razored, locked and knotted, looped
and razored, locked and neon, looped and not
the business of just anyone, our hair
is blatantly political, a staunch
and blaring tangle, glory in our names,
the gospel on our bobbing heads, it’s fierce—
and yes, still furious, still springing loose
from any peril set on silencing
its roar. You’ve underestimated us,
you didn’t know the muscularity of kink
was busily rebirthing us—it taught
us all the ways to mouth our names
with Serengeti tongues, it’s quarrelsome
and coiled, it’s all the things but always black
and coiled. This hair is all the things. But, black
and wily goddesses, we’ve always known
the powerfulness of wearing our own sky,
the lyric of the scar, we’ve always known
that even though they dared to call us slaves,
we never were. If only they had heard
the freedom on our heads, the jubilant
triumphant wail of all that hair, its rude
unbridled verb, they would have left us free
to rule our own damned selves, to live our sweet
and colored lives. Our hair is throat, is knife
against the throat, is song within the throat,
it’s how we rock and conquer every room,
our hair’s the funk, the scorch, Aretha’s growl
is hair, is funk, is scorch, Aretha’s growl
is one of just a million ways the tale
is told. It’s told in gospel hurtling toward
the rafters, told in warnings grunted blue
and deeper blue by Delta gals, it’s told
in songs our mamas sang before they threw
those pressing combs into the fire. Go on
and raise your eyes to where we rise, go on
and hail the royalty we be, go on,
resent the ways we’ve vowed to live our souls
out loud. But do not touch this hair, the black
explode, the crowning of it all. Your hands
will never know a shelter in this heat,
so sweetly hellish on our perfect heads.
So sweetly hellish on our perfect heads,
this hair has known the yesterdays we know,
has lived the history we’ve lived. Once we
were slaves. And then there were the days we sat
on plastic kitchen chairs while trying not
to hear the sizzling iron comb, its teeth
intent on disappearing us. When they
were freed, embracing wild—each strand became
a fist that pierced the air, a strident voice
that sanctified and irritated, each
and every one its tiny god. You say,
It’s only hair, a consequence of blood,
a quirk of body. What it is is life.
And even history can’t twist that truth.
Yes. Even history can’t twist the truth,
can’t warp the telling—see, our hair’s the thing
that no one else will claim. It makes us like
nobody else. It seems there is a world
of silk, of blonde and auburn, pinkish skin
that coppers under sun, but then
there’s powerful nappy, there’s the feral curl,
the everything there is, what Black girls have
that no one else imagines. Mystery
prevails—it just may be the kiss of sun
that’s braided in the braids, the moon that spits
its liquid light in dreaded ropes. The earth
was not prepared for what our locks would scream.
In its beginning, earth was fractured, frail.
In its beginning, earth was fractured, frail—
outside its realm, no one could fathom us,
our springing from a single wicked root.
When we began, our hair was furious
and braided thick against the spit of men.
Our chaos crown still razzles, nap unleashed,
and we explode, always ourselves again,
a single soul, yet none of us the same.
It’s neon, razored, crimped and knotted, looped
and coiled, it’s all the things but always black,
our hair’s the funk, the scorch, Aretha’s growl,
it’s sweetly hellish on our perfect heads.
And even history can’t twist this truth:
no woman wears the crown except the queen.
Notes:
You can also read Smith’s “Afterword” to this series at the link.
Source: Poetry (November 2021)