Poetry and Writes

Imprisonment By Body (POEM)

A woman cries from behind
the jail cell of her body.
A sick seed grows there--a
sinner's sacrilegious bond
forged from a meaningless night.

She drinks peppermint tea, tipping
the porcelain mug to her lips.
They're bound to crack from
want of speech but the
white ancients on the palace steps
tell her "no" like it's a lyric,
a song of privilege that ought
to be danced to
but the woman won't submit.

The hypnotizing rhythm makes
her nauseous--that, and the
sick seed in her stomach.

The white ancients prod her feet
with hot branders, like she's farm scum,
and when the pain proves not
enough to make her dance in chains,
they stab her with it again.

"Stop!" she screams, but her lips are
too dry to form the word.
The husk that is her voice
tries again, in vain.

"I cannot dance," she whispers,
"my ankles are waterlogged, I
ache and I ache without remorse--
oh God, I ache all over!"

The white ancients plug their ears
with twigs of ignorance, they pull
blindfolds over their eyes
and press the brander to her side.

"Sow," they write in bastards' scratch,
unreadable but to them, "hog" and
"thoughtless" they inscribe upon
her very skin.

"Dance!" the ancients hiss at her,
"dance for our reclaimed government!"

But the woman, bleeding now, resists,
and says, "You keep me from it.
I want you to know I'd like
to dance, I would--
but my body is off-balance
with the marks you forced on me.
Can't you see? I cannot move!
I'm tangled in your chains!
I want to live and not harbor this
sinner's seed inside me."

The ancients reply, "But can't
you read your fate? You acted in
haste, you bare its brunt, and
now you must
commit."

The woman shouts and cries and kicks
like the seed in her stomach will--
it will cry like this when it sees
it was forced into this world.

Silenced, the woman starves
in her dark jail cell.