Like Salt Like Sun
Independence is a weight lifter. The people are her hands, their voices the muscle along her bones. Across her hips run a thick rope, attached at the end is an anchor. She carries it with ease, letting it ground her with its rust and decay, her history. Sometimes it pulls her under, straining her muscles underneath rolling waves and the weight of the modern world.
She carries it all.
Yet...Independence is more than a weight lifter, she is the salt on my calloused brown hands, reminding me of Ghandi as he sat against wet sand, silent with unwavering eyes. She is a flower pressed against a grave or against my mother's greying hair. She is a gaudy joke spilling from red lips without repercussion, a hook with an affection for words and the choice of them.
She is so many things, defined best by a noun you cannot grasp in your language or ours. So listen: do not try to claim what you, yourselves cannot define.
Do not expect compliance for we are not afraid to raise our fists, our brooms, our voices. We are many, all together different and you are but a single force, all too similar to things we have faced before.
We are her hands, expect her to use them.
Eating Habits
You are not a bird,
you cannot fly.
Young thing, arms plump
Belly big, all skin and bone
No feathers
No beak to sing through
You are not a bird.
Nor are you a mother,
you cannot carry.
Young thing, always eating,
Belly empty, always full,
No children
No reason to eat so much
Or so little
So tell me,
Who are you trying to feed?
Traditions of Seeking
Prayers spill, from painted lips, like a mess forthcoming,
Risen waters, shaky upon her brow and her left cheek,
Opening like a void that's as big as her house, or maybe a room that's never full and,
Small, like the space between her gathered fingers or the way her body hunkers in, maybe,
Enough was a word she wished she learned but could never grasp onto—yet again.