"all I want is my body"

I wrote this poem in the Tongues Afire creative writing workshop. I've been wanting to write this poem for a very long time but I didn't have the words, the courage, da wibe... but the workshop, our synergy, and incredibly powerful space helped me to write this. I also have been sitting in this fantastic course at NYU on Race, Gender, & Sexuality with Gayatri Gopinath - (I presented my research in her class and ended up sitting in for several more class sessions because it was so thought provoking and relavent to my work) - and the readings and conversations added other dimensions to what I had already been grappling with in my head about the body and gender and sexuality. So anyway, here it is:


all I want is my body


I carved in my body
memories of rape and coercion
control and no-other-choice sexual relations

spirits of Black women, Brown women, Yellow women,
women of color, sing to me of blood and torn tissue, and
split psyches, remember, what I had to do, was made to do

breeding (of slaves), denial (of rape), benefits (of war)
unfree being capital, non/being, object of desire and hate
crossing borders woven inside my body, then ripped and divided

I carved on my skin
(re)memories of present and past, out of rhythms and vibrations,
haunted, fibrous sketches of time, spread across earthmemory

Slavery, Internment, Reservations, and so many Wars and Occupations,
UrbanGhettoPoorYouthWomenColoredBlackLatinaWelfareTrapped
RacialSteroes
KoreaVietnamHaitiGuatemalaCiudadJuarezZimbabweCongoIraq
SudanAfghanistan

I see women of color, praying and organizing
I see women raising fists, voices, & pens against men, power, & state
I see women loving women, as radical, against these silences
(taking back my body)