Personas

Homenaje a Detroit con un poema de jessica Care moore

Para celebrar la apertura de la nueva tienda de Gucci en el centro de Detroit (Michigan, EE. UU.), Gucci Changemakers ha pedido a jessica Care moore, poeta de Detroit aclamada por la crítica, que escriba un poema en homenaje al espíritu de su ciudad.

Gucci tiene una conexión natural con Detroit y su dinámica cultura, lo que hizo que la ciudad fuera elegida como parte del programa Gucci Changemakers en Norteamérica en 2019.

Cuando la Firma abrió su primera tienda en la ciudad en agosto de 2022, colaboró con artistas locales para rendir homenaje a las aportaciones de Detroit al arte y la cultura.

Gucci Changemakers ha pedido a jessica Care moore que escriba un poema que destaque el estilo omnipresente de la comunidad de Detroit y que se ha titulado Wear the Working Day.

Una estrofa del poema se ha pintado a mano en la fachada del hotel Siren para que la comunidad disfrute de esta pieza de arte mural. Puede leer el poema completo a continuación:

We Wear The Working Day

jessica Care moore

Let’s start with the way
we take over a room.

The spirit of a fashionable city is felt
As soon as she walks in.
The spark lives inside the patterned faces
of her community.

It thrives with an electricity
Beating beneath the lining of our favorite jacket
Energy woven into the brim of a wool hat
your daddy wore to those Tigers baseball games

There is love inside of large movements
A migration toward dreams and prosperity manufactured
By a wish, and a promise of something greater.

Detroiters stitch and sew & blend ideas into change.
Our legacy built on the strength of our history

We, the epitome of cool

This is how we lace, and walk and breathe through adversity
How we raise our children, wrap them in passed down
Prayers.

A Journeyman cotton mixed with moroccan silk

We steam, sew, button, break, tie, lace, grow
We bow our ties, an untied, unmatched resilience

Finding humanity in cotton is survival
Is sound cloud pillow, is comfort, is veins
lined with futurism.

It’s the reality that nothing happens without us.

Our evening fittings for the frontline
Our imagination layered with 70’s velvet colors

We are a city lined with cars, with embattled roads
East to West, we are here. Somewhere people.
Upsouth, proud. Wind blowing our feathered hats off

We smile an ancient smile.
We pattern our life from
an indescribable joy.

This is freedom personafied.
This is the tailored poise of a people.

It is the truth of why we
See ourselves in every full length mirror.

Wiry Dandy/Lions
Magnolia tree trunks for legs
Perfectly Pleated. Hot Ironed by 7am. Ready.
Our slow dance draped in denim, wrapped in
satin. Our tailored romances.

An endless self love story.

A zipper up the side. A slight smile and nod
The “What Up Doe” needs no practice.

This is Detroit. The definition of fine design
A double gauze gaze into what is possible
When given an opportunity to impact the next
generation.

Wood hangers holding up skeletons carrying our collective
Bones stretched stories wide cross oceans

Break Dance poised into prayer position

We drape our exquisite bodies in magnolia flowers
Call it dress, call it sunny. Call it summer sale

We say it’s life.
We say it’s life.

The way we choose to wrap our hair high to the heavens
We migration gear, blue collar magic

Steel and concrete
Needle to thread.

We Wear the Working Day.

Hard hat and morning cool
Polka Dot Ankle Socks
No laces on Sunday afternoon
No traces of tears
We are the old black. We new shoes, we feel every step

Of this journey.

Define elegance. Define Worth. Define excellence. Define stars –
Dancing along the skyline of an international river
Change is necessary, now. Is the necessary
Material to pattern a glove into a State
Draped in glassy Great Lakes.

Some say
It’s in the water
It’s in the swagger
It’s in the tears
It’s in the muscle
It’s the drive of our engines

In the 365 degree hoop of our earrings

We are the runways of possibility
The rule breakers, the swagger creators, the void fillers
Alligator shoes trimmed with poetry
Suede patches on a slightly perched to the side
feathered brim.

We dress for the sun and moons reaction
irregardless of the destination

We sharp as needle
We tie dye the night

Monogramming our signature, our smiles
Into a white linen, apropos, a radiant black

We Detroit Piston indigo clutch
We tangerine striped Tigers. We
Black Ice Dreamers and Red Wings
Finding warmth inside inevitable icy winters

We eat style on the hems of our aunties
after five ensembles.

Sit below our mommas braiding jazz hands
on front porch sanctuaries.
Eating walnuts and michigan cherries

Daddy always has on his favorite green tie
With a matching checkered handkerchief in the left pocket
When he comes out our front door.

You gotta be ready, just in case, they say.

You gotta be ready
to make
an Entrance.

Acerca de Jjessica Care moore

jessica Care moore es una galardonada poeta de fama mundial, artista discográfica, editora de libros y actriz.

Entre sus libros se encuentran The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses The Ghetto, God is Not an American y Sunlight Through Bullet Holes. Su quinto libro, We Want Our Bodies Back, publicado por Harper Collins en 2020, ganó el premio al mejor libro de poesía de Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

moore ha grabado sus poemas con Common, Nas, Jeezy, Talib Kweli, Karriem Riggins, Jeff Mills, The Last Poets, Jose James, Roy Ayers y muchos más artistas. Produjo y escribió su primer largometraje, He Looked Like A Postcard, en el que actuó bajo la dirección de Qasim Basir.

moore conquistó a la audiencia estadounidense en los años 90 cuando ganó el emblemático concurso It’s Showtime at the Apollo cinco veces seguidas. La poesía y las canciones de moore se exhiben en la 4.ª planta del Museo Nacional de Historia y Cultura Afroamericana. Está orgullosa de haber nacido en Detroit, ciudad en la vive con su hijo de 15 años King, un artista emergente.

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