Let us celebrate Memphis caretakers and waymakers—
for the school backpacks they stack
for the healthy greens and beans they pack.
Hands harvesting for home-bound elders
hot meals on Sunday and something sweet,
(a pudding pack, perhaps) to savor
come Monday morning.
They give God’s most majestic medicine.
Amen to convenors and connectors
translators and curators
Alchemizing space and embittered boundaries
Of class, culture, age and race.
They know her blues ain’t like his soul and that jazz man
plays a chord nobody knows. Multilingual, they are
transmuting word and deed, knowing tongues
foreign and domestic are easy to misread
Empowering a people to promise, purpose and
let us not forget please the most meaningful
of these—freedom, vision and peace.
Let us laud the liquid leaders, flexible and invitational,
not bound by proximity or antiquity.
They hold open invitations for all to step in,
move up and show out in nurturing ways.
Let the groove be a pace of grace with
full and replenishable cups so that we ensure
that wellness, like leaders, abound and endure.
Cheers to culture keepers who refuse
to be a stranger—refuting with earnest
and curious smiles the oddities
we’re taught to fear as danger.
They make eye contact—
say ‘‘hello”—
ride bikes and skateboards,
hold hope, and know that work and will
turn blighted space into a nourishing place,
with grocery stores aromatic with melon
and sweet corn in a community
where affordable homes are the abundant norm.
Much praise to the historians, porch poets and painters
who open their yards and kitchens as sacred.
Serve plates and palettes of redemption,
where no one is regarded as disposable
and everyone is a vessel of noble possibility.
Let the resources reach the roots—
where workers channel change,
with or without nonprofits, platforms,
titles and tip jars. They are good trouble makers,
policy shapers and meaning makers.
Invest in them, incentivize, recognize,
celebrate and elevate them
that we all reach a higher ground.
Let the community be centered
so that centers belong to the community
and parking lots have no priority over people
and Uptown police palaces, no privilege over playgrounds.
Be still, for just a moment, and surely you feel
a current too contemptuous for complacency.
It is more powerful than a FedEx plane
more resilient than a BNSF train.
This is Memphis—South to North, Hollywood
Orange Mound, Greenlaw, Prospect Park
Frayser, Klondike-Smokey City, Douglass,
Binghamton, and more.
Call and revere them by name—
This is Memphis love.
ABOUT THIS PIECE | “A Memphis Love Letter” was the artistic culmination of individual conversations with 13 Memphians affiliated with Centers for Transforming Communities, which was the Memphis partner in the Storied Communities, Community Stories project. The project was led by ThirdSpace Action Lab and Community Opportunity Alliance. I was grateful to serve as a Memphis artist on the project and was honored to experience the stories of community members who hold such love and hope for the beautiful city that is Memphis.
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What a lovely poem to usher in a season of thankfulness. “A Memphis Love Letter” beautifully evokes the powerful role community builders play in the places they serve. It also echoes one of the most valuable takeaways I had from the “Storied Communities: Community Stories” report: just how attuned residents are to shifts in how we do our work, and how deeply they feel the power and value these organizations bring to their neighborhoods.