This Juneteenth, I am grateful to be a member of one of the greatest literary lineages to
ever exist. That is, Black people. The way we do language – our natural poetry and passive musicality – continues to leave me awestruck. I think of my grandmother who, when asked when she would get married, replied, “The man I’mma marry ain’t been born yet, and his mama died yesterday.” I think of how simple phrases, the most mundane thoughts, are suddenly imbued with color, rhythm, and character just because we said them. Ask a Black woman in Mississippi what she has on the stove, and she’ll cross her legs at the ankles and describe each dish as if the words tasted like the food they’re describing. Ask an older Black man in Philly how he’s doing, and
he’ll summon every ounce of cool he learned sauntering through his neighborhood to let you know he’s doing just fine. God, what a miracle it is to be born Black in a world of language.

I call myself “A Worker of the Word.” That phrase is more than branding for me,
actually. It’s a recognition that to be Black and to write, or to recite, or to preach, is more than the mere use of language. Black people, I believe, do not merely use language. We work words. We take language that has been imposed upon us through colonization, respectability, and false holiness, and teach it jazz, the dozens, and Spirit.

However, to be a Worker of the Word is also in homage – and rejection – of the
Pentecostal preaching tradition my Black queer self was raised in. I am, on one end, deeply enamored with how my parents conjured from the pulpit. Walked Black people to the Red Sea. Led us alongside Jerusalem as Jesus’s name was hailed with palm fronds. I am, simultaneously, disenchanted with the church as an institution, and do not wish to be entangled with it, even if I sound like it because of who my parents are. So, I am doing what my people have always done: I’m Working the Word. I am snatching up the truth buried underneath imperfect language and professing a new gospel. Not a gospel of a deity, nor a gospel of any religion. The gospel that liberation is nigh, that Blackness is holy, and that queerness is an anointing. To my parents, the Word is the Bible. To me, the Word is all language, all meaning, all that rich undercurrent of truth as wide as oceans, that Black folks have communed with and fashioned into a story of resilience, creativity, and ultimately, life.

This Juneteenth, we are beset all around us with troubles. This nation is hellish. The news prophesies doom every hour on the hour. That much is true. What is also true was on this day in 1865, we took the word “free” into our mouths in a new way. Nobody knows that word like us. I wonder what happens when we work it.

Untitled #0619_[A Brief Chronicle of the Word]
by Michael J. Ivory, Jr.

(Instructions: To be recited aloud by Black people.)
This is an abridged history of a people
who kept God in their mouths on the run.

ONE

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word
came walking up a village road
in what would become Senegal singing.
The djeli. The griot. Sailing the news of
a prince’s birth, or a wise woman’s death, or who
these people, skin sable and crowns coily,
had been on the air.

And the Word was flesh. And the Word was
water. And the Word was the steady tum-dum
tum-dum of the talking drum. You see, we have
always been language’s favorite people. The
Word is a bird, flying on two wings – sound
and meaning. And up the village road comes
the perfect branch.

But what the Word says cannot always be
answered with the mouth. A woman comes
swaying, her hips a cradle to rock the
whole world to sleep. A man joins her,
his feet heavy, the dust of the road forced
to dance with them.

Everything is alive, and we know God. In
the trees. In the wind. In the dirt.
In us. In us. In us.

TWO

We stand at the shore and across God’s great
blue back come sails. They speak scriptures
but not the Word. Our tongues become heavy
with the unspeakable. In the belly of a ship,
we do not all speak the same language, but
we all have the Word.

It begins with a moan. The Yoruba does
not recognize the Akan who is weeping
nearby. The Fulani does not speak the
same language as the Igbo. But they each
sing, and their people answer, hearing
the Word as they know it. Home
is in shreds, but we are threaders,
quilters. A new people is born,
knit together out of what
we can keep.

We do not all survive this journey. Some
of us sing in the deep now. The rest land
here, on the other side of terror. Over time
we lose our names, we lose our songs, and
our children lose memory of the man
and his talking drum, singing the dust
out from underneath our feet. But
we have not lost the Word.

We pray like God is everywhere and
everything listens. In the hush harbor,
we marry our sweat to earth and make mud.
We sing Mary, Don’t You Weep and stand
at the Mississippi like Moses is just on the
other shore. We look to the cross and see
Jesus. In the night, we ask the same trees
we sang to in the day to cover us, ask the
same cotton we picked to cushion our footfalls,
and we run. God on our tongues, our bodies
stretching to be as free as the small place
we protect in our minds.

In a small shack, the women whisper the secrets
of plants to the young girls seeking to conceive.
This too is the Word. The men tell oil to shine
healing on the forehead and press their palms
to the heartbroken. This is also the Word. Frederick
Douglas keeps a root in his back pocket and suddenly
the whip forgets his back. This, my kin, is the Word.

THREE

A church in Chicago is quiet as Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. prepares to speak. Out in the
aisle is Mahalia Jackson, full-chested and dark￾mouthed. She wails, Joshua Fit the Battle
of Jericho and the rest follow suit. Two hundred
lips conjure up a thousand Hebrews in the image
of a dark-skinned travail and Dr. King’s mouth
twitches in the pulpit. A smile. Before he
can even speak, the Word has filled the room. We
do not remember the man and his talking
drum at the side of the road, the cradle hips
and thundering feet, but a million shreds
of memory stretch across the blue, across
time. We no longer sing the past. We sing
the future.

In 1963, a child is sitting in Mount Teman African
Methodist Episcopal Church. She grows up,
takes God with her but leaves the
rest behind. Her head adorned with flowers and
her lips red with the lipstick they tried to forbid
her, she opens her mouth and out leaps the Word
from her royal, fiery lips. Marsha P. Johnson
grabbed hold of the Word,
used it to name herself.

In 1979, Brooklyn is burning and the children the
world tried to turn away become rappers which
is just another name for prophets. In 1990, the
butch queens are imitating their fem queen mothers, turning dance floors into temples when the churches
turned them out. In 1995 Andre 3000 declares the South
got something to say and everywhere from New Orleans to Charleston,
Richmond to Miami thunders for it was there. Where we
met this soil. Where our blood cried out. Where God came
looking for the people snatched across the ocean.
Where we, the people, who kept the Word in our mouths
and learned to dance anyway,
smiled with our full, Black
mouths and taught freedom its second name:
Home.

Bio:

Michael J. Ivory, Jr. is a writer from Miami, FL, living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A Duke University graduate and North Carolina State MFA recipient, he has published with O, Miami Press, Duke Magazine, and Iansá Mag, and is currently working on his debut novel. Michael is also a 2026 Lincoln City Fellow. He is currently working to publish his debut novel.