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?"

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!

5:00AM's song

I know what sound the dawn makes;
Slow-burning horn
Rejoicing as it creeps with honey glazed hands,
Waking the autumn leaves and dreamers, still sleeping in their gutters.

let's get intentional!

For so long I have let this blog sit, hiding and scared in its little corner of the internet. No longer! I decided today I am going to get more intentional about my writing. As such, I am going to update this at least once per week, with anything from incomplete thoughts from my day to pieces of writing I've been working on for months that need a fresh pair of eyes (or a few). Also, I'll be putting this blog OUT THERE so more people can read it. So tell your friends about me!

thoughts on femme

One of my new favorite quotes:

"People associated short skirs, frenetic dancing, shared flasks, and public necking with feminism" - Linda Scott, "Fresh Lipstick"

People don't like femmes because we're dangerous.

We can fuck your shit up with our stillettos, the same ones we wore when you were checking us out, and we let you know that we could see you looking just by staring you bold in the face.
we're dangerous because we want you to look, and because we are that type of girl.

We're dangerous because our black as tar, brown as clay, lily white, fat, thin, curvy bodies make your dicks hard and your pussies wet.

We're dangerous because we don't really give a shit who shaves and who doesn't, and where they do and where they don't.

We show our legs, bruised from our romp with last night's mistress, or rollerderby, or dancing, under our sundresses, Carharts, lycra micro minis, and pantsuits.

We're flirtatious, we're coy, we're bold, we're direct, we're innocents and we're sluts. we are all of these as once, and don't see them as paradoxes, but as more chances to expand our arsenal.

We can change a bike tire with the best of the boys and the butches. And if we can't, we're not buying the bullshit that says that it makes us less radical than you.

We play dress up with our girlfriends, our girl-friends, our boyfriends, and our boy-friends.

We take care of one another's kids, and let them play in our makeup, if that's what he, or she, or ze wants to do that day.

By the way, that look that's on display in Forever 21? Yeah, We found some shit in a free box and handcrafted it about a year before they were mass producing it at the Gap.

walking home

Today I had I really great conversation with the mama of the baby I watch for work. She's writing her dissertation on representations of black female sexuality in cinema.

She provided for me, without having realized it, or at least not letting me in on it if she did, something I've been greatly needing lately, and that's a sense of direction and a pair of open arms.

Sometimes I wonder if the easier path would be better for me over all. I mostly just wonder that when I look at people I used to know. So many of them are living these lives that are, to some degree really appealing, if only for their comfort level. To be the prototypical upwardly-mobile black girl at college, with not a hair out of place or ever letting one's leg hair get long enough to notice, it'd be a lot easier in someways. To force down the parts of me that don't line up with convention, or to ignore the things that I think about, the ones that keep me up at night because they're burning for a voice. I give those things voice, because I've never been able not to notice them. I just got a vocabulary for the voice to speak with in the last couple of years. But when I didn't know the words it was so much easier to keep it quiet.

I wonder if all of the projects, both internal and external, are even worth it. I wonder frankly if I just try to do these things because I can see holes, and wiring, and marionette strings, but can't quite figure out how to make it stop, this system that I see ruining everyone that I love. So I do what I can, in the name of exposing the gears and churning cranks, but maybe I only do it so I can sleep at night.

bell hooks has this bit in "Yearning" where she talks about black folks who are at the margins not only of mainstream white consciousness, but mainstream black consciousness. Those who are committed to explicitly anti-capitalist projects, and don't equate black self-actualization with black capitalism, and are not afraid of losing their "blackness" by consuming all types of cultures. She brings in this awesome quote by Paulo Friere (that I'm gonna butcher) that says that we can begin as objects to then reenter as subjects. All of these projects are an attempt to steak out subjectivity in a culture and society that writes me out as the object, essentially by definition.

Introduction

I should start out by saying that I am planning to use this blog mostly to air out the things I turn over in my head and with my friends. It seems like writing them down would be a good way to track my thinking. I kind of have a tendency toward cataloging my processing.

Much of it will be political. Some of it will be poetry. Most of it will tackle my life, and how I see my experiences intersecting with privilege and oppression. A lot of it will undoubtedly be a little dramatic (I'm a girl who tends toward extremes, what can I say).

I have a lot of projects floating around too, and a lot of books that I'm reading. I also tend to think a lot about pop culture and the cultures in the often weirdly small and specific communities I'm apart of. I'll have a lot to say about that too.

And I have the good fortune of being surrounded by people who are ridiculously talented, so I'll probably show off some of their stuff too. In case anyone stumbles onto my little corner of the internet.

I'm taking an "it ain't much, but it's mine" attitude toward this whole blogging thing. At least for now.

I also really want to hear feedback from anyone who happens to read this. So please, leave comments and send emails! I'm brownskinnedpalimpsest[at]gmail[dot]com.

Here goes nothing, ya'll!