my body
my black girl body
has never been mine
stands in need of reclamation
is a site of oppression
a battlefield
to be conquered
bartered
criminalized
minimized
trivialized
made a chariture
masking your desire
to consume the very
vessel that surrounds my divinity
my body
has borne
bears
endured
endures
your scorn
as you prodded probed paraded it
shackled
breaking it into broken
killing it to dead
crucified it in trees
strange fruit indeed
eating me with appropriation
murdering the thought
and reality of me
my body
sport
commodity
producer of profit
labor
replicable
injected into lips and hips
riding waves of
invisibility worn
like skin
my body has never
been my resting place
transient in existence
not here
can’t be
sequestered behind the veil
waiting for manumission
my body
a universe
a miracle
of patience
a pinnacle of persistence
a concise canvas
charting your aggression
my body
has signed its own
freedom papers
stole away
followed the moss on
the tree
caught the freedom train
crossed over
under the north star
i am not nasty
i am divine
my body
is mine
my black girl divine
majick is mine
my body
my vessel
my body
mine
when i pass
bow and beware
the stars
falling from my
hair
