Root Work Journal - Navigating the Ocean - Volume 1, Issue 2
Atlantic & Man Went Down
Lena Camille Otalora
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.47106/10.47106/4rwj.12.10191931.11676412
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Lena Camille Otalora (she/her) is a young writer and multimedia artist currently based in Boston, MA. Born and bred in Miami, Fl, she developed a strong fixation with the ocean throughout her childhood --it became a source of amusement, awe, and unease alike. Eventually, the ocean’s enigmatic image crept its way into her adulthood, insisting itself a motif. As in life, so in art; Lena Camille’s work tends to focus on her generations-long relationship with the Atlantic ocean and the affairs of nature, emotion, and memory. She’s acquired a BA from Boston University, having studied Film & TV Production and Comparative Literature, and lovingly tends to her houseplants in her downtime.
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Both “Atlantic” and “Man Went Down” were first drafted during Lena’s time at Boston University. Lena’s mother having been a dancer who trained with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, the music and choreography of Ailey’s Revelations has always been a great source of inspiration to her. This is proven particularly true in the poem “Man Went Down,” which is a story of memory, home, and spiritual return that alludes to Revelations’ “Wade in the Water,” as well as the Spiritual that lends the dance piece its name. “Atlantic” is an intergenerational story of Black womxnhood and emotional encumbrance. Matriarchs in many Black cultures carry both great stature and great burden, thus informing and complicating the dialogue surrounding what it means to be a Black (Atlantic) womxn in the digital age. “Atlantic” then locates itself amongst the writer/speaker’s memories of visiting the ocean as a child and how those memories transformed into adulthood.
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Atlantic
I felt this groaning,
groaning inside of me
lifting up in my ribs
shimmying and rattling,
crafting a xylophone of my
bones,
turning over and punching
at my chest
wanting me to spill over, wanting
to spill out
if only my skin could howl
along with my soul
at least then, perhaps I could cry
at least then, a chorus we’d become
am I allowed but
a moan?
are wails reserved alone
for the holy spirit?
permit me a sadness
all my own—
if I am allowed to hold anything, let it be, at least, my tears
my mother’s
my grandmother’s
my grandmother,
she swallowed hers whole
for no one to see—
the taste, like a stone,
smooth
and hard and
ever growing larger
I always knew the world began and
ended with her, my Cronus,
sickle in hand,
poseidon in her belly
the salt, the salt wearing at her throat—
tracking sand into the car,
my toes curling, curling, curling,
bringing the earth into me, feeling like I had seen the world,
my muscles forgetting to let go of the waves—
I understand now, why
she’d take me to the ocean
I had to learn the taste
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Man Went Down
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” ― Toni Morrison
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we waited so long,
occupying ourselves with song,
lulling ourselves, preparing these muscles for the waves—
God’s-a gonna trouble the water!
salty necks and baked shoulders
in exchange for damp feet—
Wade in the water
up to my calves, up to my knees
drudging ahead,
the soles of my feet opening up over rough stones,
making a Moses out of me
God’s-a gonna trouble the water!
Yemanjá’s womb
sighing to Us,
murmuring for me
Wade in the water
I bring my cowrie shells, nesting them in my hair,
nesting them in my eyes,
God’s-a gonna trouble the water!
my eyes shine like alabaster in the sun,
my whole body cloaked in pearly cloth,
delicate in the brine of baptism
Wade in the water
surging to my knees,
I learn how to fall
as the tide
Didn't my Lord deliver!
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