Ashley Mack-Jackson

Exploring the various texts we engaged with throughout the seminar allowed me to consider several different Moses figures and look at water and rocks from artistic and ecological perspectives. During one of our sessions, when we had a moment to reflect, Dr. Sasso asked the questions: When are you the water? When are you the rock? When are you the rod? I was immediately intrigued. As a Black-queer-woman who has been often told that my proper position (in the church, in art, in the world) is prone, my art often engages in navel-gazing as an act of revolution, a reclamation of myself, and by extension my communities, as important. My artistic goal, then, became to rewrite myself and my people into the narrative of the water and the rock and the rod. I grew up in the Black Baptist church, where the symbol of the rock is tied to Christ who is the rock of salvation, so I began there. I looked at some of my favorite water and rock hymns and spirituals. In these hymns the water, or the fountain, often acted as a metaphor for salvation. Much like the water that Moses received from the rock was the salvation of those wandering in the wilderness, the water in these hymns is used to redeem those who chose to follow Jesus. The rock, then, was as it had been with Moses, the being that must be broken to allow the water to flow. Interestingly, the rod, or staff, could be depicted as an item of comfort or abuse. Exploring those hymns and my own experience I looked at myself and my community and reimagined personal and collective histories to explore the various roles and everchanging roles of water, rock, and rod.

Praise for the Fount Opened

In the year my father died my water broke
on a hospital bed next to another pregnant 

woman whose man had just brought her French
fries so everything around me smelled 
like salt and hot potatoes when I knew 
my first true baby would die I was lying 
head low feet high and lifted up to try 
to keep my girl inside I couldn’t eat
before my emergency cerclage that came
too late and all I could do was shut my eyes 
and think shit Jesus Jesus Jesus shit
my cervix is incompetent my ears are heavy
and I am so damn hungry in the year I got 
married amniotic fluid trickled up my thighs 
tears rolled into my hair I wanted food
my body unclean and all that water wasted

In a Weary Land

1 The Monument

And God said (And God said)
And God said (And God said)
Let there be a monument. Call her 

Harriet (or Minty or Miriam 
or Esther or Mary or Mary):Wonderful.
Counselor. Mighty. Savior. Spy:Call him
Abraham (or Abe or Moses

or Aaron or John or John). Let them be 
a river. Call them Civil, the place of the people, 
everyday. Call him Sacrament:communion: 
washing of feet:baptism:Call her New 

Land:New Body:New Promise:New Sacrifice.

Let the monument live and be rock.
Let them be sediment be bits of stone 
bone heat and pressure-fused. Be blood 
be water be flesh and breath be buried. 

Underground and stirred up:
(They just want to know:how long and what for?)

Then God said (Then God said)
Then God said (Then God said)
Just give them up. Split her

head with the weight of all time 
all carrying all rock all water all dancing
all bearing all nations all providence
all bodies all flesh all blood all wealth.
 
Make them a lesson:a sign:a warning
Property of a stolen nation. Rip his
head with a bullet. Give them a splitting
headache let them catch a hot one

the unsuspecting way:Give them a vision

that knock them out when it comes up 
through the brain. Crack the head of the holy 
one clean off. Toss it in the reflecting pool. 
Slap the promise out their mouth.

(They keep asking:what is promised?):
Conquer a body:conquer a land. 


2 The Death

Skull been split
Feet been quiet
Brain been hollowed
Mouth been clamped 

Up come the people
Up come the wails
Up come the parade

Of witnesses:who didn’t 
see shit coming:Slavery
If masters don’t kill 
them give them the wild

Give them the people
Give them the wails
Give them the parade

Of emptiness:who can 
see this shit coming:Poverty
If thirst don’t kill 
them show them a sign

Show them the people
Show them the wails
Show them the parade

Of fullness:who will
see all this shit coming:Prosperity
If wealth don’t kill
them snatch it all back

Clamp the mouth (say it was the tongue)

Hollow the brain (say it was the thoughts)

Quiet the feet (say it was the heal)

Split the skull (say nothing at all)

   (Surely she dies)
  ((Surely he dies))
(((Surely they die)))


3 The Burial

For this part we build something great and ridiculous 
and beautiful and bigbig call it a nation again commission 
the artisans and the masons and the sculptors and the poets 
and dramatists just not the ones who ask how long and what 

for we need the ones who specialize in graven images the dead
and the pretty in their proximity to our own likeness carve their
face like our face their nose like our nose and who knows really 
what their nose looks like any way all that matters is memorial 

erect pillars curate their words and blast our minds right into 
posterity speak to and of the dead thing like it is alive make it 
mean something it will never live but let it be an idol a heritage
a reason for tears and reflection oh pleaseplease give it a reflecting 

pool or a fountain how perfect how symbolic they will still be dead we will still 
have a stench but with all of the columns and the solemn devotion who will notice


4 The Resurrection

There was a fountain once it might have been filled with water or blood. I do not know because it wasn’t marked for my people and there was no God:man to ask me to draw some out for him. Once we could wade or drink in the water freely. Over here, though, we was cut off from water like all the time. Like swimming pools, like cool drinks, like free flowing rivers wide . These fools labeled everything. Like babies. Mine mine mine. Sold paradise for power. Just couldn’t leave a good enough time alone. I want to know how you eat from the tree every day and still don’t know shit? When I was a baby, God cracked my skull. Gave me bouts of pain and blackout separation from earth-like rest every day so I had nothing to fear. What is death to a black girl been working, been mothering since five:peace and the great by and by.  But if every day is a split head and too much:many to carry death just be like laying a heavy bag or somebody else’s baby down at night. Miriam danced and lugged all that water and praised and made up and sang all the songs. Did it get her anything but the wilderness and a people who kept walking on? How long before they got thirsty and knew she was gone? And Moses hearing from God and walking with those people foreverever got him dead on the other side of the fence from the people:the land they was about to overtake. Did they take his bones like he did Joseph? And once I forced brother Abraham’s hand, made him say and do what God put on my heart–called him out like Moses did Pharoah, I might have grown up in your house, master, but this ain’t my home– how long did they let him go on without a bullet behind his left ear? Hear me when I say:What is a body? What is a land? But trouble. Something to preserve. Something to fear letting go. A fountain you can’t drink from because you walled it up to save it from the wild that’s always coming.

Hebrews 9 

About Ashley

Ashley Mack-Jackson is a writer, teacher, and a native Hoosier. In 2013, Ashley cofounded Word as Bond, Inc., an organization that provides free creative writing education to youth writers, where she is currently co-CEO. She is also an assistant professor and assistant department chair of English for the Central Indiana region of Ivy Tech Community College and an editorial assistant for the Indianapolis Review. Her work has appeared in publications like Callaloo, Obsidian, and The Indianapolis Anthology.