AVERY
Write this down: “The African-American experience is:
{Being a thread}
that holds
Everything
In place.
{Being the sound}
that draws
itself out
Across The World
{An answer}
An experience
that
no one has asked
The right questions for.

ME
I walk
With my head turned slightly up and to the left.

Because I’m usually afraid someone
Is going to tell me I don’t belong there
There
There
Even when I have a key

Making eye contact
I hold my breath
Still
I feel the sound coming in
That says I am in the wrong place

I hold my chin a little higher
And I smirk.

I walk around with a backpack of water I barely drink
But it’s there in case
There’s no There
there

Or I get stuck underground
On the train
Trying to get “home”.

ME
Black feels compressed to me--
Like Shale.

Whatever that mother tongue was-- The bottom layer.

SKiNFoLK: An American show is an ancestor-revering epic concert/play structured in seven movements that explores identity, heritage, and the legacies of blackness in America. The story is what is made between the performers (one of which is me) and the audience as we move together through the work with blues, jazz, neo-soul, pop, rock, and spiritual black sounds as the water surrounding us.