Sunday, January 22, 2017

Fragile Life Here --

I put these on my thoughts-to-come-back-to board months and months ago, just because I liked them.  They feel relevant now.  I highly recommend reading the full poems.



...
Fragile Life Here --
Which is what I say to strangers

When my aura gets dim
and I need an extra layer

of protection to steady me
through the day's unraveling reels

of atrocities.  I'll point
to my chest and remember

how joy survives,
humming through the cracks

of accidental grace,
making a home out of nothing.

Kendra Decolo
From "Sometimes God's Work is Sloppy but it's Always on Time"



Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can't
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can't do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on a beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thing about God/ or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/ all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can't do what I want with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
...
...
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own

June Jordan
From "Poem about My Rights"