poem...why?
I Was Not Born Anglo-Saxon,
when I emerged, cold blue Cherokee Irish.
My hair was not blond, nor brown-
the roots did not penetrate
my neural impulses.
I was not born white.
I refuse to be corralled there,
emerging with my German temper
and my hillside sensibility.
I yearn like the red-cheeked Scottish
yearned for their serpentine
marbled mountains.
Scanning the African plains-
which woman escaped to the exile
of the native crests in early America
to stand proud in the blood
of her first kill?
I was not born
with a single spoon:
gold, silver,
wooden or plastic.
I was born with a mind
that sparkled like underbrush flame.
Gender neutral, examining influence
from the black-haired-mother-shelter
that told me: “Girl, you stand both alone
and together. Achieve everything.
Bind your own books with your own
stories and take your Godmother’s
early death as mythological reference.
Do not be bound
by the black and white blurring of the gray
matter that is yours, that does not exist
on melanin, or class; society, or privilege.
From my cradle, I listened.
I watched my blue eyes meet the hazel,
the topaz, the spotted desert jasper.
I am not constrained by the freedoms
that are mine to claim.
I know the taste
of government cheese,
the lingering prejudice
of education. I know
the derisive sphere of normality
that accepted my skin
but not my heart.
I emerged, wailing, into
a cold white metallic environment
from my blissful red pulsing
universal womb.
Aboriginal injustice
took root in my lengthening
brown curls, labeled me:
WOMAN. And my first thought:
(wo to any man who seeks to claim
my herstory) I will not conform.
I will form the pages, this is my own.
Dedicated to Mitzi Quint,
my first professor of Women’s Studies
when I was 15,
and to LeeRay Costa,
my second professor of Women’s Studies when I was 33.
when I emerged, cold blue Cherokee Irish.
My hair was not blond, nor brown-
the roots did not penetrate
my neural impulses.
I was not born white.
I refuse to be corralled there,
emerging with my German temper
and my hillside sensibility.
I yearn like the red-cheeked Scottish
yearned for their serpentine
marbled mountains.
Scanning the African plains-
which woman escaped to the exile
of the native crests in early America
to stand proud in the blood
of her first kill?
I was not born
with a single spoon:
gold, silver,
wooden or plastic.
I was born with a mind
that sparkled like underbrush flame.
Gender neutral, examining influence
from the black-haired-mother-shelter
that told me: “Girl, you stand both alone
and together. Achieve everything.
Bind your own books with your own
stories and take your Godmother’s
early death as mythological reference.
Do not be bound
by the black and white blurring of the gray
matter that is yours, that does not exist
on melanin, or class; society, or privilege.
From my cradle, I listened.
I watched my blue eyes meet the hazel,
the topaz, the spotted desert jasper.
I am not constrained by the freedoms
that are mine to claim.
I know the taste
of government cheese,
the lingering prejudice
of education. I know
the derisive sphere of normality
that accepted my skin
but not my heart.
I emerged, wailing, into
a cold white metallic environment
from my blissful red pulsing
universal womb.
Aboriginal injustice
took root in my lengthening
brown curls, labeled me:
WOMAN. And my first thought:
(wo to any man who seeks to claim
my herstory) I will not conform.
I will form the pages, this is my own.
Dedicated to Mitzi Quint,
my first professor of Women’s Studies
when I was 15,
and to LeeRay Costa,
my second professor of Women’s Studies when I was 33.