Post the Sixty-Eighth or Forced Silence/Forced Speech

My body is like the land

Lush and wild

Untamed and beautiful

The hairy expanse of my thighs

Mirroring the long rolling hills of forest

The smooth perkiness of my breasts

Reflecting the heartbreaking heights of mountains

The soft brownness of my skin

Matching the fecund loam of the earth.

My body was once untouched by the white man’s Rapaciousness

And then

They came with their guns

And their ships

And their Pox

They came with their Great White God

And their Great White Book

They came with their promise of “civilization” in one hand

The lash in the other

Civilization always seems just out of reach

The lash is always too close

–

 400 hundred years

And 1600 seasons later

She says

I don’t see race!

He replies

Will someone please think of the white Man!

And my head is pounding

 ‘Cause My body is still colonized

The land of my foremothers is still being desecrated

And I am still struggling to survive in a world

That hates all things

Trans*/Brown/Queer/Woman

Pushing my way against the swiftly-moving river

Of violence and lack of resources

That somehow has managed to make itself invisible

They say that we’ve come a long way

That so many things have changed

That hope has come at last

But now I’m fighting for recognition of my oppression

On top of the oppression itself

And it’s like trying to scream

When your attacker is already at your throat

Like trying to escape a thousand tiny pinpricks

While your whole body chained to the ground

Like having rocks tied to your feet

Being thrown into the sea to drown

And never dying

–

Say something in Spanish for me

He demanded

As if the language of my people was a

Circus trick

  That I was required to perform at his request

As if my vocal chords were his to command

How’s this

Come mierda y muérete

Colonization is the stuff

Forced Silence/Forced Speech

Is made of.

Post the Nineteenth or Black Clouds

We kissed

His lips were like two dark soft

clouds

Dancing high in the air

They seemed so unattainable at the time

But here we were

Locked in a struggle of labial dominance

What was I do to but float with him?

Soaring through the air

Cresting and falling in turn

My breath catching in my throat

My heart beating ever faster

And still

We kissed

For what seemed like an eternity and a day

Stars were born and died

In the space of that moment

Glaciers froze and melted

Continents shifted and broke apart only to rejoin

And still

We kissed

And I knew that a kiss like this could

topple empires

and raise up gods

A kiss like this

I knew would change the world

I can only imagine what the sex will be like