By: Alexis Outlaw
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Afterdark: For the Culture was a true delight as a member of the audience! I found myself hooting, hollering, reflecting, and feeling many layers of emotions and responses. The display of spoken word, poetry, rap lyrics, and deeply meaningful shares allowed for me to be able to snap, clap, laugh, and respond viscerally to all the magic in the room.
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Vanessa

For my time at Afterdark, I had two standout artists who gave me the feels. One was a scheduled speaker, and the other was a brave soul in the audience who stood up and added vibes!
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Audience member Vanessa got up and spoke on her poetry from a time past in which she had written thoughts, and each poem was on each letter of the alphabet. Ironically, the letter she shared with us was A, and as someone named Alexis, the first letter of the alphabet always piques my interest. I appreciated the alliteration and flow of her words. It was a grand play on word use, and as someone who has had to close out on a relationship and felt like a crumb of coping energy, if you will, the poem was A fantastic way to speak to healing from love lost and the realization you lost all of yourself trying to cater to what you think is for you.
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Haley King

The storyteller Haley King also came with the heat as she read a few poems. What stuck out for me was her ode to the state of Milwaukee and what living here means for many of our black and brown people. I empathized as a black mother with a black son, the experiences that may be waiting for my son, even if I do my best to prepare him in advance. Haley also shared a poem about Intimacy and how sharing her body felt like one thing for her but something else for her mate in the sheets. The share culminated in this idea of doing all these things physically to get a response emotionally at the whim of someone else. Been there, and it felt magnificent to hear words from another, a creative, on the subject as well.

Brooklyn Lloyd Dixon

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Brooklyn Lloyd Dixon closed out the night as the main feature of the evening. As he entered the stage with a bevvy in hand and it let me know that what we were about to hear was going to need a toast or two! All the way from Miami, it was nice to hear his love for Milwaukee as a second home to call his own. Giving props to connections made with many creatives and others in the black and brown community. Brooklyn gave us a few pieces: I felt most connected to the piece he shared about relationships colliding in toxicity but the need to prove you can make it work despite. I looked into the audience and saw heads nodding, fingers snapping, bodies swaying as his cadence of delivery got more and more intense as he spoke about the entanglement that good loving does to good judgement.
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Overall, Afterdark…10/10!