By Kendal Mangum
My mirror shown a slender petite
Beauty, her nipples pointed towards the sky
And down south, kissed by nature
The cradle of civilization.
I carry in me
A million men and women
I carry in me
A bitch
I carry in me
A mother
I carry in me
The divine
A multiverse woman
Made in the image of her own god
The stars dance for her entertainment.
But in the eyes of man,
She’s closer to the dirt than the stars
A woman can't possibly be trusted with
The world
I was warned about this,
From women, antiquated and new
Warned about the moment that little girl
Tortured by this thing we call the way things are
Is bestowed with a mask
She will wear all her life
Melted to her face with a smear of rouge
Doused in the stench of a whores perfume
So suddenly I stop being.
My uterus becomes a shackle
Bound by a lock I don't have the key to
My chest becomes a burden
Weighing heavy on an already battered body
And there was a time when
I held the double-edged sword of peace and naivete
Squeezed my breast together
For the presidents, preachers, and men of the world
Swirled my finger around in my cup
and tasted the addicting elixir that is
Bullshit
Mounted the stallion of shame
Rocked my hips
And rode it with glory until tears welled in my eyes
And spilled over into the river of every woman's sorrow
Until I drowned in my despair.
But then I remembered
Before my body budded
Before I recognized the smell of sex
When I feared sea monsters
Instead of man
Before the earth under my feet
Turned vile
l would gaze upon my mother
With ebony eyes of wonder
Hoping to see her face in mine
And my grandmothers in hers
Knowing the wonder of life has to be
A woman
As a teen
Seeing every Black baby
Born from the
Scared ancestral vine
As an amalgamation of all the pain and love given and taken from my people
I knew that the wonder of life had to come from
A woman
So as the world begs me
To see my fundamental powerlessness
Tries to trick me into catatonic conversations
About my allegiance to this man or that one,
My allegiances were formed when my skin stopped being pink,
And the second the moon whispered in its voice, red with rage:
Flyyyyyy
So I lace the wind between my fingers
And escape the cage
Full of other birds too scared to fly
Into what could be
And as I fly
My tears fertilize the roots
That blossom into
ARs
Missles
& Bombs
For the women in
Guyana
Haiti
Jamaica
The AUC and beyond
To dare anyone with the audacity
I will not ask for permission to fly and flee
To exist within a universe I created
You cannot rape me into submission
Nor scare me into complicity
Pussy, power, passion
My holy trinity.
