A video that specualtes about Jesus being born a black woman today… Adapted from the poem by Aphra Tesla. Music written and composed by Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt and Globoscuro (Emiliano Pietrini.) With Dasia Woolery. Cecelia Chapman 2018.
Stations of the Cross, a poem by Aphra Tesla:
When I come, it is too mild, my presentiment of Mary’s twitching face. You take yourself from yourself, an ancient affair.
Each stifled sound, each non-evaded flame you shall pay for. Extinguished palps of vaginal walls. The doll’s image sowed within me you will have to misshape with your head at the baptismal font. The blood will splash forth onto Christ’s high foot, heaven’s vault stuck between the teeth of your father, amen.
You’ll remain with a money-bag full and a painful clatter.
When I come, it is too mild, I am thinking wide awake thoughts. For you are taking myself from myself, it is horrible.
Silently a dirty snout moves across prayer-benches. Here beside me in the sacral space there’s thousands of me. And you. Your forfeited smile in exchange for the pay.
The fourteen chapters of I Have Collected All the Writings of the Empire and Burnt Those Which Were of No Use are narrated by fourteen poets whose voices imagine a dark dystopian journey lit only by fires of dissent.
