Excavating Memory: An Introduction
Memory works in the nation states
–a few unremarkable past victories.
Maple sugaring, forced labor, race
memories, black women’s stories –
lost Irish Magdalen laundry days.
Unreviewed identities, visual arts,
abundant recurring painful pasts —
prescience, concentration camps.
Borderland hatred still sits in places —
— folk knowledge, persistent practices.
Forensics excavate all the harbored
histories, narratives — reinventions.
Colonial powers march on mountains.
Military texts — they remember, right?
Imaginal amnesia’s predatory powers —
women penitents demand reparations.
No imprisonment without visible scars.
Now, pioneer mothers refine millennium.
Materialism redacts maternal memory
— re-edits their clandestine crossings.
Our future passes into digital archives.
Old memorization? No longer required.
. . . . .
Poet: Susan Powers Bourne
Source: FPR Impromptu 10 | Kristina Maria Darling — text,
Excavating Memory: Sites of Remembering and Forgetting
Process: Pick-mix excavation