Excavation

from the Latin excavāre —“to hollow out” | a prose-poem

The Movable Site

By all intensive purposes: a man appearing at times to be a woman, but anatomically speaking — a man.

“And for our purposes herein, we, the team, call him a man.”

The Team

We are a team of six with multiple degrees, extensive veterans of ancient sites, working painstakingly, with perspicuous attention to details, digging down. Digging down millimeter by millimeter into the subconscious strata of memories in dingy soils, sands, and clay.

We are the minors in search of veins of ore revealing truth.

Suntans in reservation dining rooms, pale miners in their lantern rays Night, night and day Hostage smiles on presidents, freedom scribbled in the subway It’s like night, night and day

by Joni Mitchell Shadows and Light

The Site

The surface is normal. Appearances are deceiving; Lidar scans reveal a disturbed surface, GPR — Ground penetrating radar

Exposes spirits of a forgotten race embedded within the man. Recognized minors to minors the ancient muzzled mouths and eyes are free to howl, wail, moan, and weep.

Old wounds once cauterized are vulcanized by fires of rage Reopened. Raw, bellow against injustices from the genocides Of oppressors claiming strength.

One by one they, the survivors encased in stone, are exposed from the petrified head, throat, spine — intestines turned hardened large and small. Fingers tips filled with rage turned to great sorrows:

The squabbles between the once trapped minors become a chorus of pain. Too much to bear —

The Man Moves

“Too much, too late,” he cries drowned out by the twenty or thirty inner cries he runs. “Run faster,” he yells/they yell. Are their voices indistinguishable from one another?

“Escape!”

We, the team, follow him through the wake of his dust. We are blinded by the stuff and must stop or lose sight of all the work. Three return to the site he once occupied for further study and forensically search for clues to where he may have gone.

The man appears functional for the most part. He hears the voices of all those within that share his body, awakening. He hears their cries and whispers — the admonitions, the accusations against his skin claiming that they protected him from harm. And threatening him with harm, shouting to be put back to sleep or be put down.

Instead, he stumbles and falls — no tumbles - down a long hill over a precipice:

Freedom of the Fall into water they go with his body, plunging into depths, unknown.

He becomes water and dreams:

Surrender into the Dreams of Death

He dreams of the hurts bonding with joints in his shoulders, wrists, ankles, toes and fingers. Like branches of dead tree limbs they break in the wind and fly away.

Dying at last to the night. Left with a body of faint light.

The Team, The Man, and Remembering

Set free from the dream he awakens and reassembles his self. Goes forth to begin again.

Remembers again the team searching for him, remembering the pieces of the wounding by the oppressors, remembering they wounded him and Earth and Earth and him.

He longs for freedom. He works at it.

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Rebecca Romanelli | Pene Hodge | DL Nemeril | Winston Huang | Elle Beau ❇︎ | Melanie J. | Filiz Özer | madmess’s thoughts | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Joseph Lieungh | Alison Hollingsead | I. Trudie Palmer | Ravyne Hawke | OrlaK | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Nombuso Makhubu | Shirley Willett | Alan Lew | David Price | Diana C | Simão Cunha | Marcus aka Gregory Maidman | Libby Shively McAvoy | Blaine Coleman | Michelle Roussin | Spyder |