Eloisa Amezcua
This poem began as an assignment I received while serving as a visiting artist for the Pages program at the Wexner Center for the Arts in the fall of 2020. I was asked to respond to pieces from a new exhibition and share my response with a group of high school students. Tomashi Jackson’s work drew me in. Her creations center historical voter disenfranchisement and suppression in Ohio’s Black communities. Contradiction (1948 Head of Voter Registration Line) (1965 Clarence Mitchell, Patricia Roberts Harris, and others watch the Signing of the Act), 2020 captivated me.
The title and its use of traditionally complimentary colors (red and green) are compelling. The faces in the painting, some obscured, some vivid, and the other elements asked me, the viewer, to reckon with the idea that something can be granted as a right and at the same time be suppressed. Perhaps in our country, for many communities, the granting of one thing followed by suppression of that very thing has only ever existed in tandem.
As a lover of words and linguistics, I thought of contranyms—that a single word can carry contradictory meanings. And while I understand that this happens because our language pulls from various etymologies or over time nouns are verbed into new meanings, I am still confused. I am still reckoning.
The first draft was me working my way through these opposite meanings. As I sat with it longer, I knew the form needed to inform the content more, to play with the opposing and doubling which is why I whittled it down to the bare language in a contrapuntal, a poem that can be read in more than one direction—horizontally and vertically. This form allows for the points of tension to shift and multiple meanings to exist depending on how it is read, just like a contranym’s intended meaning depends on the context of the entire sentence.
The poem found its way into a manuscript in progress called The God Poems, where none of the poems have titles. Often titles aim to contextualize or situate, and my objective for this collection is to create a bit of discomfort.
< draft >
CONTRADICTION
I don’t know if I have it in me to understand
how bound can mean both moving and restrained
how the lights can go out and there is darkness
then the stars come out and there is light
we can hold each other up in support
or hold each other up as obstruction
I have been left and I have been all that is left
we wear on until we are completely worn
< revision >
(no title—part of a manuscript where poems do not have titles)
