Recognition for The Ghettobirds and "Hoop Dance" by Bryant O'Hara
|
The Ghettobirds by Bryant O'Hara was nominated for the 2022 Elgin Award, Full-Length Book Category, from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA).
The poem "Hoop Dance" from The Ghettobirds by Bryant O'Hara was also nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award, Long Poem Category, from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA). Please enjoy reading this poem in its entirety below. You can also hear the author reading this poem aloud on Soundcloud. |
|
Hoop Dance
by Bryant O'Hara
for Baba Askia Toure: Here are the stars …
Ras Elegba,
Speaker for the Recombined,
Mother-and-Father of Starships,
yawns
and greets the dawn.
He watches his fingers and arms
grow a little longer
and a little thinner
as he completes his slide
into feminine form
for the 50-year Boogie.
Every half century,
the Ghettobirds
start their grand dance cycle
at the Gaian Ring,
in geosynchronous Earth orbit,
known affectionately as
The Hoop.
They do this
for what they call
the recycling of souls--
and they never stop.
For them it is always Carnival.
Now complete,
she calls me
while I am under Ganymede,
asks me to paint her vèvè.
“Helluva time for a booty call, man,” I reply.
The old joke takes its time to reach her--
and she is patient:
I resonate at this honor,
Been a while
since Ras was female,
so I hightail it in style
on a laser-launched cruise ship.
I catch her preparing for the long dance.
The electronic paint spreads
to make vèvè
that are ancient and modern,
visual and … other.
They form just a portion
of her part
of the Great Circuit.
Acolytes from across the Genus
come to trace their own
loving pathways upon her,
completing her.
With a kiss
she passes on to me
the keys to the instruction-set
and the tradition-set
of the Genus,
and I …
I go away for a while,
leaving behind
this derivative: your narrator.
I am a fiction in this dance--
all of us are.
The vèvè show that.
The vèvè see to that.
The dance opens
with old traveling songs,
ancient blues,
and datasets from probes.
They get woven into pirouettes,
low-gravity jetés,
and good old-fashioned rump-shakin’.
Ras is not all here when she sings.
None of us are.
The songs
and the data spooning them
shout that
and see to that.
There are different names
for the ceremony:
In the colonies,
we call it the BounceWiggle;
in The Hoop--
the Hula,
of course.
The songs
and the data
and the wonder
and the spirit
call the restless all
who feel they have no city.
Come with us,
say the songs,
and build the traveling city.
We seek the path to come,
say the datasets,
and go.
We seek
the one
to which
to go.
As the Ghettobirds dance,
we writhe
in the synaptic bath
of sense data.
It is--
to baselines--
a hurricane toggling the Divinity bit.
It is--
to the enhanced--
a wind driving us all to the leaving place.
It is--
to the recombined--
working up another sweat in a century’s work.
It is all
sleight of hand
once you cozy up to the universe,
let her whisper open secrets
into whatever receives signal.
At the last degree of The Hoop,
the Ghettobirds raise their arms,
fingers always pointing
to the same point
on the galactic map.
They unpack titanium bats
and swing them
to the music of the dance,
as if aiming an imaginary ball
at that point.
They pound the ground
in percussive polyrhythms--
pulling
at a paradigm
like a dog
in heat
on a chain.
Every other measure
they slam the ends on the ground.
“So be it,”
say the bats.
“Pick a point in the sky
and we will go to it.”
We build a starship
at the last degree
of The Hoop.
And we dance while we do it,
singing
as we weave its minds together
from uploaded patterns
of spectators
and dancers.
Its body begins
in the Lagrange points
of Earth and Luna,
and make their way
to The Hoop.
The dance moves to the ship,
a half-built megalopolis,
and it spirals out toward,
and then past,
the Lagrange point shepherd moons.
The ship Hohmann-transfers
out of the system,
stopping often along the way.
It’s an All-Souls Train,
whistling in the radio spectrum,
“Now boarding!”
Launch is not the coda of the dance.
It is the repeat sign.
Call it what moves you:
the recycling of souls;
the cycle of the Genus.
It is the way we roll,
here in Long Now.
I wave goodbye
to my self that grows
into the next Speaker for the Recombined,
the next Mother-and-Father of Starships.
As we launch,
Ras Elegba speaks for our templates
and for our children left behind:
“We remember this little whorl of worlds--
and rejoice,
for we are all genus Human.
And in our cosmically,
comically
short time …
we are immortal.”
“Remember,
and rejoice.”
by Bryant O'Hara
for Baba Askia Toure: Here are the stars …
Ras Elegba,
Speaker for the Recombined,
Mother-and-Father of Starships,
yawns
and greets the dawn.
He watches his fingers and arms
grow a little longer
and a little thinner
as he completes his slide
into feminine form
for the 50-year Boogie.
Every half century,
the Ghettobirds
start their grand dance cycle
at the Gaian Ring,
in geosynchronous Earth orbit,
known affectionately as
The Hoop.
They do this
for what they call
the recycling of souls--
and they never stop.
For them it is always Carnival.
Now complete,
she calls me
while I am under Ganymede,
asks me to paint her vèvè.
“Helluva time for a booty call, man,” I reply.
The old joke takes its time to reach her--
and she is patient:
I resonate at this honor,
Been a while
since Ras was female,
so I hightail it in style
on a laser-launched cruise ship.
I catch her preparing for the long dance.
The electronic paint spreads
to make vèvè
that are ancient and modern,
visual and … other.
They form just a portion
of her part
of the Great Circuit.
Acolytes from across the Genus
come to trace their own
loving pathways upon her,
completing her.
With a kiss
she passes on to me
the keys to the instruction-set
and the tradition-set
of the Genus,
and I …
I go away for a while,
leaving behind
this derivative: your narrator.
I am a fiction in this dance--
all of us are.
The vèvè show that.
The vèvè see to that.
The dance opens
with old traveling songs,
ancient blues,
and datasets from probes.
They get woven into pirouettes,
low-gravity jetés,
and good old-fashioned rump-shakin’.
Ras is not all here when she sings.
None of us are.
The songs
and the data spooning them
shout that
and see to that.
There are different names
for the ceremony:
In the colonies,
we call it the BounceWiggle;
in The Hoop--
the Hula,
of course.
The songs
and the data
and the wonder
and the spirit
call the restless all
who feel they have no city.
Come with us,
say the songs,
and build the traveling city.
We seek the path to come,
say the datasets,
and go.
We seek
the one
to which
to go.
As the Ghettobirds dance,
we writhe
in the synaptic bath
of sense data.
It is--
to baselines--
a hurricane toggling the Divinity bit.
It is--
to the enhanced--
a wind driving us all to the leaving place.
It is--
to the recombined--
working up another sweat in a century’s work.
It is all
sleight of hand
once you cozy up to the universe,
let her whisper open secrets
into whatever receives signal.
At the last degree of The Hoop,
the Ghettobirds raise their arms,
fingers always pointing
to the same point
on the galactic map.
They unpack titanium bats
and swing them
to the music of the dance,
as if aiming an imaginary ball
at that point.
They pound the ground
in percussive polyrhythms--
pulling
at a paradigm
like a dog
in heat
on a chain.
Every other measure
they slam the ends on the ground.
“So be it,”
say the bats.
“Pick a point in the sky
and we will go to it.”
We build a starship
at the last degree
of The Hoop.
And we dance while we do it,
singing
as we weave its minds together
from uploaded patterns
of spectators
and dancers.
Its body begins
in the Lagrange points
of Earth and Luna,
and make their way
to The Hoop.
The dance moves to the ship,
a half-built megalopolis,
and it spirals out toward,
and then past,
the Lagrange point shepherd moons.
The ship Hohmann-transfers
out of the system,
stopping often along the way.
It’s an All-Souls Train,
whistling in the radio spectrum,
“Now boarding!”
Launch is not the coda of the dance.
It is the repeat sign.
Call it what moves you:
the recycling of souls;
the cycle of the Genus.
It is the way we roll,
here in Long Now.
I wave goodbye
to my self that grows
into the next Speaker for the Recombined,
the next Mother-and-Father of Starships.
As we launch,
Ras Elegba speaks for our templates
and for our children left behind:
“We remember this little whorl of worlds--
and rejoice,
for we are all genus Human.
And in our cosmically,
comically
short time …
we are immortal.”
“Remember,
and rejoice.”