Poet Kemi Alabi, author of the acclaimed collection Against Heaven, is returning this fall with the next edition of MELONCHOLIA: a black rage ritual, set to take place in Chicago, Illinois. Part performance, part communal healing practice, the event takes its name and central metaphor from fibroids, the uterine growths disproportionately common among Black people, sometimes compared in size to fruit, ranging from apple seeds to watermelons, using them as a jumping-off point for a wider meditation on repressed anger and who is allowed to express it.

Alabi frames the ritual as a speculative theory made physical: if unaddressed anger can lodge itself in the body as illness, what happens when a room of people is given permission to let it out instead? MELONCHOLIA answers that question through four distinct movements. It opens with “Call & Response,” an interactive gallery walk introducing attendees to the world of fibroids and inviting them to reflect on their own relationship to pain and stress, before moving into “Opening the Vent,” an audio immersion accompanied by libations. The evening builds toward “Rage Banquet,” a fruit table meant for both eating and smashing, complete with a shake space soundtracked by DJ Love Marie and somatic invitations to let anger physically move through the body, before closing with “The Balm,” a wind-down of herbal support, conversation, and calls to action.

The ritual is a collaborative undertaking, featuring music by DJ Love Marie, a fruit banquet and libations curated by Alexandra Antoine, and somatic support from Liberation Healing, a lineup designed to hold space for what Alabi describes as a specifically Black, and often queer and nonbinary, experience of grief and rage rarely given public room to exist. Past attendees have described leaving the ritual feeling as though a weight had lifted, calling it a rare cocoon of safety to meet themselves exactly where they are, with several noting they left newly aware of how many people in their own lives quietly live with fibroids and related health struggles.

For anyone in or near Chicago this fall looking for something between poetry reading and wellness practice, MELONCHOLIA offers a rare hybrid. Early access sign-ups and updates are available now through Alabi’s website, with full event details to follow as the fall date approaches.