Nia Pearl is an award-winning poet, writer, environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. She is an established host and event curator passionate about creating participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. Nia’s writing has been published in Radicle magazine, Meridians journal, The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets, and Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion. She is one of the recipients of the 2023 Nomadic Press/San Francisco Foundation Literary Awards.
Bones talk out the side of their neck
What I know to be true is I am buried beneath a bougainvillea bush
My sibling is the very earth I lie in
Our first lifeline is now somebody else's food
It is 1919 in the town that birthed these pine bluff bloodlines
Daylight flees the same town that ran our mothers out
Sundown in any other place would be beautiful
My memories sleep in two separate rooms
They argue about picket lines through the wall in my childhood closet
They ask “What came first? The mask or the martyr?”
The forgetting begins two steps before the dream wakes up
The virus arrives as a door knocker and I watch erosion from afar
I suppose it’s common for oceans to make arches of the rock
I am coming / to tell you
We have been here before
I am coming / to tell you
One day you will be the oldest generation
I am coming / to tell you
This poem is the last place they will look for you
I am coming / to tell you
The revolution will come with water
I tell you / I am coming
