Magpie Poem

magpie,
magpie, they call me in the morning
catching and keeping as more than catch can
building a nest for no one in particular
and when they pass they ask
“who ya craftin that fine looking basket fo’”
that’s what they say
and I say
say
“fo my damn self, now move on toothless grin man”
sweat pouring while I’m building and tacking and painting and nailing nailing nailing
MY muthafuckin sweat
ya no count bum
in my head and out loud
but I don’t mean it
when I say it out loud
but really
I am building a house for me and no one in particular
I steal the pages books for warmth because the house is made just of spit
sweat
mine for sure
the fluids are rich and mostly my own
dripping like ichor down my chin and into my very own nest
hardening until it looks like something
and I’d like to see you try to unstuck it from the place I got it fixed in
just try to pry off what I done
ya been gone so long
and now have come to pull loose what I done
in the name of something bigger
a nest that hangs like a placenta over water
made of things I passed while flying over
and I will never eat quick when I share with friends
because I will know that there will be enough
I paid for my abundance in spit, and sweat and other sturdy waters and potions that I’ve been oozing by my lonesome
and you just jealous cuz you couldn’t quell the flow,
Ms. No One In Particular
I have sacrificed the 7 years of bad luck to get my place pimped out with flecks of mirror
and in the cracking and tearing of unintentionally filleted copper flesh
added my own blood to the mortor that keeps my home standing
firm
if unhappy
fixed and reliable
if sagging

skanky slutty femmes unite and take over!

and now for the real post…

i changed the name because i am realizing more and more as i understand my own gender better that one of the first thing that people notice about me is how little clothing i wear on a day to day basis. it is interesting that queer groups don’t often view that as a target of gender policing. not in the old fashioned, tired as hell, played out line “men can take off their shirts in public, mom, why can’t i do it too.” although i think that is a part of the story.

i am currently at my job, ya know, the library. stacking, shelfing, bitching and moaning being the majority of my goals for the position, it is good that i am usually alone during my shifts. well accept for cracked out div III’s and the dreaded imposition of the mid spring tour group.

tour groups are the bane of my existence! imagine a loose semi-circle of aging hippies mulling around stupidly with their over eager spawn touching everything in sight and speaking at the top of their lungs in a place that they are wholly unfamiliar with. as though this sight were not magical enough, there is a somewhat disinterested college student at the helm of the mob lying through their teeth about hampshire’s illustrious amenities.

today as some of my ankle biting future peers meandered past in confusion, two of the above mentioned aging hippies and one of their crazy Birkenstock wearing, patchouli bath taking, menstrual blood painting kids stopped behind the column in front of the desk. in what they assumed *incorrectly* was a whisper they said “the librarian is wearing a belly shirt, what a skank.” now, i could have proceeded to a.) layeth the smack down on their candy ass for talking shit their carter era politics would not back up. b.) gracefully told them to shut the fuck up because they were in a library, imbeciles! c.) cried softly to myself and create a desire to change the offending article of clothing. or d.) written about their idiocy in my own femmity femme blog.

i chose options b.) and d.) as all of those who know me understand i would have.

ever since i was littler i have been called nympho, slut, whore, fast and easy. i have coded these insults in tons of different ways because of my past *see archived posts for more info if necessary* the father of an ex once said that i looked like a hooker (wouldn’t be a insult, except that he said it as one), and used it to justify the reason that i was racially profiled in a restaurant. everyday people use my skimpy clothing to justify to touch my body inappropriately, feeling my exposed thighs most regularly. when i walk out of my house someone invariably tells me to go back in the house and put on more clothes. one could ask (and some have asked) why i don’t just dress differently, or assume that i do so because i seek the sexual attention of others (which i think is the reason that most people dress the way they do, who in the hell wakes up in the morning and looks in their closed like “ what should i wear so that absolutely no one wants to fuck me?”) and if they do, they need a self esteem implant.

i choose not to dress differently because part of the way that i see my gender is tied with sluttyness and skanktivity. part of transgressing normativity in femininity is challenging arbitrary rules about the amount of clothing needed in order to be respectable or worst even the new way to say “better than you” empowered. i’m smart, most people who know me know that, so why in the fuck can’t i quote plato in booty shorts? who decided that i couldn’t and why should i listen to that dumbass?

so, slutty skanky femmes unite! let our ample thighs and happy round bellies hang out over our tiny shorts. show our hairy armpits in a tube top, enjoy your body and your life, but white Christ, quit being such a prude.

back, furreal this time.

ok, so i changed the name of ze blog as i’m sure you can see. as we all know, summer is a very special time in the life of the compulsive perfectionist college grrrl. a time where there is well…time, time to read things that weren’t written by prune faced dead white men, a time to tan ( or burn, depending on the day) in the hot hot sun, and most importantly, a time to continue writing in my beloved, although neglected, blog. i miss blogging, particularly because it’s a really great time to focus my thoughts and think about the idea of wit. so, i’m back and shit, so read my fuckin blog, mmkay?

bronze

most of the time
when I try to tell you the small things
the words leap from my lips too soon,
suicidal in their quickness
and as I see them drop
off of some precipice unforeseen
I recognize that they are as stunned as I am
particularly
at the moment of impact with the ground

so i finished my trauma triptic

so its not quite a triptic, more like a triptic +3
here goes....
___________________________________________________________________

1. when you walk into your church as an 8 year old understudy in a play about slavery where the kid that your understudying gets his eyes gouged out in the play and comes up to you after church when everybody has left and you are small and wearing patent leather shoes and little lace socks and a poncho that was crocheted by your mema and a dress with at blue top part and a tie in the back and he looks at you and smiles at you and asks if you want to have sex with him but you do not know exactly what sex is but you say no anyway but he’s a big 13 year old. a big 13 year old man. and you know that if you run you’ll be punished for running around the church and if you scream you’ll be punished for yelling in the lord’s house because the Jennings family just does not do that and because god doesn’t like ugly and you know that, little girl. and anyway he has put his dirty sock in your mouth because he knows that even though you would be punished for yelling in the lord’s house and that god does not like ugly you might scream anyway. and you have to be careful not to bleed on your church clothes. and you don’t remember what standing up felt like after, thank the lord. and you don’t remember how long it was before he got off of you, praise jesus. and he didn’t make you promise not to tell anyone anyway, hallelujah, praise him. a mother to the motherless and a father to me.


well when you walk out of that church, falling into a black hole seems less farfetched and getting into a plane crash seems more likely than living till the age of 13,15,17,20 and a it seems only right that you may be mauled by a bear eaten by a lion scooped up in your pool by a shark or a whale that you couldn’t see through the chlorinated water or be eaten by piranhas in the bathtub that were cleverly obscured by sweet smelling bubbles that grandma dumped in so that you could be clean on the lords day before Sunday school, let the church say amen. i mean who doesn’t worry about monsters in their closet at 19 years old or strangers waiting under their bed as they sleep ready to stab through the mattress at a moment’s notice? is it not somewhat likely that i may be walking down the dirt path behind mema’s house and be sucked into a whirlwind that i later find out is the rapture and meet jesus tonight, hallelujah praise him?

2. Ms. Ruby is the glue. She is my entire childhood, only midtoned person I knew from home. She is an event, an archetype; teacher, auntie, neighbor lady. Well manicured hands stretch four year old thighs, adult enough to touch, child enough to hurt, a sadists dream. As soon as I thought I was just grown enough, just grown enough to like it for myself, just grown enough to understand why and how and when people touch each other like that, just when it became an act that I could perform every Sunday on my knees with an old ladies pussy that smelled like moth balls and musk she would pick my thinking self up and cradle me. call me her baby. her little baby thing. outside her grandkids would have birthday parties, my family would have barbecues throughout sweltering summer nights laughing in each others company and smoking menthol cigarettes. I was inside, quietly swallowing old lady cum, deep as wine with mucus in it. she did not happen to me, she lives in all of my stories. every summer of childhood, every first kiss, first fuck, school dance, she lives. she moved, went home as i left for college, her house is for sale.

3. a strange thing happens to me when i envision myself scheduling a routine pap smear. routine, it should be routine, somebody told me i need it. for the health of my vagina, just my vagina not me. i can see myself, adorned in with the same stomping boots, a little longer in the tooth and with softer leather, that i did when this routine was started two years ago. the brisk brushed iron door know mirrors the ice block that makes its way to womb when i think of what will happen next, what did happen next.

all of me, every part at least, wishes that i had walked backwards, recoiled from the ice block doorknob and walked home backwards. every part of me wishes that instead of the office having a window into a waiting room full of worried, sweaty women it would have instead contained a mirage forecasting my impending rape. instead, me and legs walked in to the waiting room full of worried, sweaty women and picked up a clipboard with my last name on it. legs and the other parts of me settled quietly into a chair closest to where the counter was. once the silence assured me of my safety i told arms and fingers to fill out the form the black receptionist gave me. Johnson, Cyree. age: 17 .gender: dyke. sexual orientation: dyke. reason for coming/concerns: questions about safer sex/ std testing. race: black.

when the doctor greeted me, his blackness let me slip into a warm dark comfort. tall african man, face wavy with age and shiny and dark. i followed him to the room with the paper slip and leather bench stealing the pen that arms and fingers wrote with. the clipboard with me on it was in his hands until he left it on the table without so much as a glance.

feet hung heavily in metal stirrups, the examination began without questions or conversation. ashy knuckled, gloveless hands pumping in the tight, sticky pink mass. My vagina became something unfamiliar and completely unattached , a family secret, a cracked vase, sharp points and jagged edges everywhere, burnt bread, an unworthy friend.

4.5.6.

sometimes my brain gets stuck on things, not unlike a balloon on a tree. not pictures, just words. when i smell vintage clothes, my nose picks up the odor of menthol cigarettes. when i see a kid have a birthday surrounded by plastic furniture with loving relatives all around i dare not eat cake, why would i, it would only taste like cum and cheap box red wine. every teacher, auntie and grandma seems a predator with arms long enough to hold, but also choke. my vagina stays clenched, cracked, burnt. lovers see the broken bits and make the pieces into necklaces that they give to other women, never thinking i may need them back. they push the tight, sticky pink mass and are revolted, no matter how much perfume i wear, it’s not a secret it’s the whole story. people see me and at once, see raymond, ms. ruby, the doctor. people see me and make polite conversation but ultimately turn away. lovers, always lovers, use the cracked vase secret to cut away at me, to jab at me. lovers. they ask me to keep secrets where they are ms. ruby, countless times, cigarettes waft through the window.

yay im off of hiatus

yay im off of hiatus

Dear Hampshire College

Dear Hampshire College,
I know you specialize in creating smelly, oblivious, colorblind racist white people, but I have recently met some of your top anti black people of color! Congrats guys.
love love love
sea jarelle