We Built This Prison on Blood and Bones

A three-part poem from a Black woman in America:

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The Maypole

I am the maypole

Erected through joy, my thoughts and

feelings twine.

Maypole

via Flickr

Binding, cinching,

they hold me

immobilized.

Time dances – round and round

trapping 

spinning – round and round.

A dizzying whir of noise and color

and I

am fixed.

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The Zoo

When I was a child 

I learned to look out of myself.

Separate my mind and body

To watch myself live through a lens

Like a voyeur.

I bore witness

Taking note of routine

Watching myself through a pane of glass 

Thick enough to keep me in

Clear enough to see through.

I made sure my enclosure was enriched

Toys and treats for stimulation.

I watched myself grow

From created self to 

Created self.

Some days I’m not inside

Lion in a cage

via Flickr

I’m living in the body

Present to the moment

The enclosure is empty.

I see myself now

Pacing 

Back and forth

Back and forth

Back and forth

Bored

I’m tired of watching

Tired of being watched

But, If I’m not looking

Do I still exist?

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The Chip

Minority has a definition in the dictionary. But it would take a lived experience to capture the feeling of having that word applied to you. To understand the essence. 

I’m a Black woman born and raised in America. Minority means walking into rooms where no one resembles you. Everything from automatic sinks to social media filters targeting the “default” race. 

Wondering why someone doesn’t like you and the dawning realization that it isn’t you on a personal level, it’s a deeper inescapable, unchanging you. It’s the constant discomfort, unseen danger, the gazelle ever wary of the lion.

Racism, stereotypes, microaggressions, words created to describe every level of violence. Add in being a woman, and there are few who can relate. Misogyny, sexism, sexual violence. The Black female body used to birth slaves and gynecology. The most likely to die during childbirth. Wet nursing someone else’s child while having your own baby auctioned out of your hands. 

It is belonging to everyone, but yourself. Being the first Black anything. Representing not just yourself or your family, but your entire race. The juggling act of rebelling against stereotypes that you don’t fit and shamefully denying the ones that you do. 

It’s being too black, not black enough, and oreo, ghetto, loud and angry, a whore, a race traitor, a nigger. A distance between women of other races, and men of your own. Having no home, no roots, a culture steeped in violence and recovery. 

Hope against all odds. Never being seen as a child, an adult, or a person. Slavery, sharecropping, separate but (un)equal – as long as you’re doing worse 

Voting because we fought to, reading and writing because we fought to, going to college because we fought to. 

All while knowing the same people protesting integration are still alive and still fighting against you. The white hood of the KKK and the Confederate Flag. Entire hate groups, just because you exist. 

It’s protesting the lynching of your people and being labeled a terrorist. The school to prison pipeline, over policing and police brutality. Government sanctioned assassinations of community leaders. Sundown towns. The bombing of black communities. 

The quieter violence of gerrymandering, redlining, and disenfranchisement. Saying everything isn’t about race when racism is built into the foundation of this country.

Hair being unprofessional, nappy, good, or bad. 

White purity and black evil. 

Minority, majority, dominance, submission, oppressor, and oppressed.

 Fighting for everyone, while everyone fights against you.

When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors (paperback)

The Evergreen Echo