Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Getting BENT
I'm happy to reveal some exciting news today! In ten days I will be leaving for a month to head to Seattle to study at Bent writing institute! Some of my favorite poets (including Tara Hardy and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha) have taught there. I'm totally thrilled to be spending the next month there and will be posting my writing from that experience throughout the month of May. Look out for it!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Invincible Skin
The following poem is one of the first things I wrote when I decided to take my writing seriously enough to do things like edit, make a concerted effort to study the works of other poets I respect and admire, and, God forbid, publish and perform. This is probably it's fourth or fifth draft since its existence. In some ways, this poem has been my touchstone the last year or so, hence the blog title.
Come here.
A little bit closer, and I'll tell you a secret.
I have always wanted teeth like stars
and invincible skin.
Fingertips ridged as old seashells, caress scars
moles, razor burn, ingrown pubic hair, picked-at dead skin on my cuticles.
These are shackles, reminders of my time-sensitive packaging.
Muscles taught, anticipating pain
still hold ready,
still
hold
ready.
This is my palimpsest.
Recall the marks.
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
sound like
Force
Clamp
Prod
Dissect
Cut
to guilty bones and quaking hands from too much caffeine and too few calories.
Survivalism.
***
Survivialism: the urgent act of saving yourself using the bluntest tools made of the crudest materials.
Nightmares haunt my body, dark, thick and expansive as Conrad's Africa. I am tied and nailed down by Lilliputian white men, rope braided thick and rough, taught over my breasts, stomach and hips. It burns, digging like graves into my skin. A flag is stuck into my navel and I am claimed. Suddenly they are wearing bibs and bring out forks and knives. Talk about eating the Other.
This is my palimpsest.
Ghosts hanging round my neck, sometimes it's too damn hard to move like this.
These histories we carry with our skins, in our skins, make them thicker.
And I am learning sooner rather than later that this thickness?
This thickness just makes me feel heavy.
Did you know that a suit of armor weighs 55 pounds? No matter how much I weigh that's still going to be more than half of me.
So I ask you now.
Please, let my body be mine.
Not a force to be reckoned with,
Not a reminder of home you never had,
Not a placeholder at parties and meetings for your high-minded radicalism,Not a symbol of my strength in the face of heteropatriarchialwhitesuprimacist society,
Not a symbol of my failures to be a blushing white lily,
Not a symbol of anything.
Let it be mine and let it be soon,
because I tell you this, Silence eats me when I am starving.
I have felt his dank breath on my shirt collar,
have seen his fangs covered in the blood of other little black girls.
Mama Audre always told me that Silence is death.
Let our bodies go, because soon there will be none of us left.
And if our bodies are not reason enough, remember that we are the appetizer; his appetite is insatiable.
He will most certainly be licking his lips,
looking around and wondering,
"What's for dinner?"
Come here.
A little bit closer, and I'll tell you a secret.
I have always wanted teeth like stars
and invincible skin.
Fingertips ridged as old seashells, caress scars
moles, razor burn, ingrown pubic hair, picked-at dead skin on my cuticles.
These are shackles, reminders of my time-sensitive packaging.
Muscles taught, anticipating pain
still hold ready,
still
hold
ready.
This is my palimpsest.
Recall the marks.
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
sound like
Force
Clamp
Prod
Dissect
Cut
to guilty bones and quaking hands from too much caffeine and too few calories.
Survivalism.
***
Survivialism: the urgent act of saving yourself using the bluntest tools made of the crudest materials.
Nightmares haunt my body, dark, thick and expansive as Conrad's Africa. I am tied and nailed down by Lilliputian white men, rope braided thick and rough, taught over my breasts, stomach and hips. It burns, digging like graves into my skin. A flag is stuck into my navel and I am claimed. Suddenly they are wearing bibs and bring out forks and knives. Talk about eating the Other.
This is my palimpsest.
Ghosts hanging round my neck, sometimes it's too damn hard to move like this.
These histories we carry with our skins, in our skins, make them thicker.
And I am learning sooner rather than later that this thickness?
This thickness just makes me feel heavy.
Did you know that a suit of armor weighs 55 pounds? No matter how much I weigh that's still going to be more than half of me.
So I ask you now.
Please, let my body be mine.
Not a force to be reckoned with,
Not a reminder of home you never had,
Not a placeholder at parties and meetings for your high-minded radicalism,Not a symbol of my strength in the face of heteropatriarchialwhitesuprimacist society,
Not a symbol of my failures to be a blushing white lily,
Not a symbol of anything.
Let it be mine and let it be soon,
because I tell you this, Silence eats me when I am starving.
I have felt his dank breath on my shirt collar,
have seen his fangs covered in the blood of other little black girls.
Mama Audre always told me that Silence is death.
Let our bodies go, because soon there will be none of us left.
And if our bodies are not reason enough, remember that we are the appetizer; his appetite is insatiable.
He will most certainly be licking his lips,
looking around and wondering,
"What's for dinner?"
Monday, April 5, 2010
posting. finally. an explination follows.
So remember how I triumphantly declared "let's get intentional!" some months ago? Notice that I've been lacking in posts since, oh, December?
Here's the thing. Firstly, my lovely home full of technology resistant homos has just recently come around to having an internet connection in our residence. Second, my trusted steed had an unfortunate run in with a bottle of water on the first day of the new year (R.I.P. Macbook motherboard). It does discourage one from making regular blog posts when one has to walk in the rain and cold to spend five dollars on a sandwich and a latte in order to use an internet connection. One spends time on a (well-needed) hiatus from regular internet usage for about four months. One writes a lot using a good old fashioned notebook. But now I'm back! With a new computer I've been saving for and a real live internet connection that I can use from my room. Look for a new blog post (of the non-apologetic variety) in the next few days, now that I've stepped into this decade!
Here's the thing. Firstly, my lovely home full of technology resistant homos has just recently come around to having an internet connection in our residence. Second, my trusted steed had an unfortunate run in with a bottle of water on the first day of the new year (R.I.P. Macbook motherboard). It does discourage one from making regular blog posts when one has to walk in the rain and cold to spend five dollars on a sandwich and a latte in order to use an internet connection. One spends time on a (well-needed) hiatus from regular internet usage for about four months. One writes a lot using a good old fashioned notebook. But now I'm back! With a new computer I've been saving for and a real live internet connection that I can use from my room. Look for a new blog post (of the non-apologetic variety) in the next few days, now that I've stepped into this decade!
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