“Petit Marronage” by Atena O. Danner

In the Caribbean Islands, whole villages of rebels who escaped enslavement known as maroons were founded in the local mountains, developing into small societies. This was known as ‘grand marronage.’ In the United States., circumstances did not allow for such large scale seizure of space, so escapees practiced ‘petit marronage.’ ‘Petit marronage,’ was a kind of resistance practiced as early as the 16th century by enslaved individuals/small groups who would escape for days or weeks and then return themselves to “captivity.”

“I know some of my fellow slaves see me
As I turn an eye toward the woods.
Often it happens between us: seein and just as soon
forgettin. Knowin
Time will come again to glance past each other
when I return and take my place again.
At this moment I am determined to steal away.
I roll a small stone from the well of my jaw
Into the knot of my hand: a seed I kept,
Fit to burst with power.”

Yes I would do it again. Yes, it was a zenith in the long arc of chances taken.

Friendly fascism shut down the elevators and emergency exits, “for everyone’s safety.“ according to the automated voice. Scanning for a way out/up, I pointed to the cleaning lift outside the window.

After side-stepping enforcers in our employer’s carpeted halls, with tangled branches and clattering jars pressed into our straining arms, one by one we stole past the receptionist, out of the window, to pulley-hoist ourselves toward the sky.

On the roof, exposed to open air, twigs in our hair, cheeks burning with thin lacerations, we began to build a spell of protection with our hands under fluorescent search lights trained between our eyes, we broadcast our labor: forbidden creation illegal collective imagination; we built a shelter of story: branch by branch, feather by feather, a shield from shards of falling ice. Yes, I would do it again.

“Birds come and go with the wind
If I had wings, the master
Would surely claim those, too.
For this reason, I chose my own hardship
Hardship is what these white folks won’t abide.
That is why they cling to us
Why they won’t let go.”

Ice-storm-turned-oasis, in that moment uncut honesty was warm bread in our stomachs. Under boughs of oiled wings, we watered the olives and buried the dead as best we could. Each forbidden name uttered: a sun for the seeds of truth in our mouths. Radiant satisfaction softened the wax that bound feathers to our appended limbs, even as we heard the jarring sound of cable snap, flywheel reel and metal on metal on glass. Yes, I would do it again.

“That is why I launch, not by wing,
but by oar in a hidden canoe
To make a neighbor of bears and snakes;
I sink into the Great Dismal.”

The stairway was locked from the inside: only one way down for this little company of Antigone, and quickly: As truth warmed our hearts, so it warmed our wax work. In urgent and faltering rush to the edge, we leapt exhausted in V formation, to ascend on the lift of each other’s melting wings. We hoped the seeds beneath our tongues would be found among the wreckage of our good work.

“Morning found me landed at a hummock
banked to my own body,
Laughing, ‘How about that, maroon?’
Loud as I pleased, laughing with the mosquitoes and birds.
When I knelt to dig a hole in the soft peat
The ground reached up and grabbed ahold of my hand
Held me firm until I let go the seed.”