Problem Chylde: Learning & Writing

Mistaken

See, every one makes mistakes

Pero, who owns up to their mistakes

And who has to take on the mistakes of every last one

Who is to blame when white women

Just don’t get it

Who is to blame when colored women

Just don’t get it

Why is the answer to those two

the same

Who gets to stand up for every woman!, uh, everywhere!

And who has to be bitter and jealous and whiny

Who knows that the answer to those two

is different

Who gets to cry about being muzzled

And who is actually muzzled

Any guesses?

Before you assume

Before you blather on about nothing you know

Try listening

Try admitting you might be wrong,
mistaken

Turtlebella at Slow and Steady

—

Bakit?

Why is it not enough to simply write as a womyn of color?
Why does it change once I write of color after womyn?
like its merits decrease
or its potential increases
I’m brilliant cuz I’m brilliant
not cuz of the sheen of my hair.
I am why.

Why the echo
when say I womyn
My define
so very fine
Womyn
and I write from the insides
and I say,
Yes
I say
it’s not too much
nor not enough

I am a womyn
owning up to my race
-ism
YES
the internalized inferiority
the internalized superiority
that
YES
Skins me alive everyday

And you ask
“Bakit”
“Why you so mad?”

Bakit?
Bakit?

Why?
because I can’t say my own damn truth without
“angry”
following

“Women of color”
“Angry”
world goes YAWN.
and shirks, What else is new?

I’ll tell you what’s new
We the “Women of Color” you love to ignore then agitate for your leisure
are tilling into deep magenta brown soil you never seen
and our tongues,
pink and blistering,
cool and wide,
are sipping honey from sweeter, higher
swinging hives
than your neck can strain

And the “Women of Color” writers
that you flick off with your shoes
are reading aloud to towns and towns
with cackling and krumping to music
…too something
for you to hear

So spit your questions onto each other
and not at me.
I’m busy with other things.

Angry, sure.
Why not.
I’m angry, but I’m a lot of other things too.

Do you need to know all of who I am before you believe me?
Do you even want to know who I am at all?
That’s your question, not mine.
Cuz I know you.

I know you from those glossy cover history books my short arms had to carry home.
I know you from the holidays we gotta jump jump up and down for
I know you from the whys and cries and jiggly thighs you write about so much and call Women’s Issues
I know you from the realtor and the delivery boy
I know you

Do you know me?

I think your books are shallow.
I think that you are not capable of deepening work that contributes to anti-racist feminism.
I think your books are flat out flat and, yes,
I have read them

And your tired Who Me? Poor Me? Love ME!
sounds like that ol’ record my Pops used to play
every Sunday morning at 8
after a while, I stopped listening
and slept with peace

Why’s it not enough to say
No Me No Like Your Stuff
without being asked for my resume
and literacy skills score

Instead of quarreling over the responses
why not analyze the question first
and look at the cornering, stereotyping, sabotaging, limiting, narrow scope
of your own questions

Let’s look at the contaminated wood
of the house before you
kick out the guests who are
coughing, spewing
Allergic
dying from the air
you provide

And before you wonder why your branches
are being cut;
remember that the land your roots settle
was stolen.

From the beginning,
the wrong story was told.

Sudy at A Womyn’s Ecdysis

—

Submerged

In the vast space between individuals
Misrepresentations bloat themselves outward
And drown out the self,
And drown out connection,

We are drenched
In our own contexts
And the contexts assigned to us.

Like Chappelle dropping out because
There’s no space to make connection
Because racism took up all the air
And his meaning got submerged
In an infinite racist re-interpretation
And there was nowhere
To breathe.

Like I am dropping out because
There’s no space to make connection
Because racism takes up all the air
And my meaning is submerged
In an infinite racist re-interpretation
And there is nowhere
To breathe.

Because the idea that
I could expect someone
To shift the center
Of themselves
Only makes sense
In theory.

And trying to describe, clarify, justify,
Communicate, represent, defend, write, articulate,
Teach, rationalize, convince, explain, explain, explain, explain
Myself
Is like torture.

Because a thousand letters have already been written
But who cares about them now?
And a thousand prayers have already been whispered
But who listened to them then?
Because it turns out that any beauty I bring
Is only interesting
When it satisfies
Other people’s agendas.

And the body, once so vulnerably open,
Only provided a back
To be used as a bridge
For other people’s journeys.

And there I am under the bridge
Of my own body
Drowning in a swamp of poor vocabulary.
A muddy water of distorted meaning in which
to be friendly invites entitlement
to be helpful is to be a mammy
to be authentic is to be needy
to be angry is to attack someone
to be trusting is to be dramatic
to be generous is to sell myself out.

Every word I speak is a trap.

And all the white people are so fucking sure
All of this can be worked out
Because vocabulary is not their enemy
And meaning is theirs to build
And water is theirs to drink
And bridges are theirs to cross.

A violent white surf
Of selective memories, rumors, no-shows,
Fucked up assumptions, and predictable presumptuousness,
Swelling up in the space between humans
That should’ve been for patience, humility, and reconciliation.

Submerged in a narrative not designed for me -
Not able to divest for desire for connection,
Not able to engage for protection of integrity.

That Girl at That Girl Has Issues