i’ll scream it again & again—

no matter how eager, how radical, how cute you are

i do not exist for your fancy of freakery.

i could care less about feeding your taste for exotic flavors. i was not born to stroke your fascination of marginalized people.

no matter how much you are learning, no matter how much power/money/influence you carry, no matter how much you always know the right things to say,

my body is not for you to examine, conquer, or casually observe
as if the strands of my hair were nothing more than pages of a magazine

the creator did not craft these hands, lungs, feet of mine so you can feel good about yourself. my issues are not for you to solve.

who said you could analyze me? i am not a hobby, a project, a case study

nor will i ever be a pet to collect
in that menagerie of yours

instead i am harriet tubman using her disability to trick slavemasters, survey lands, and carve out paths to freedom
i am the spear waiting in datu lapu lapu’s right hand, standing with thousands ready to slice the colonizer’s head off of magellan’s body
i am the body casts frida kahlo painted on
i am the freedom song my joseon ancestors sung, the taegukis wrapped around their foreheads as they demanded an end to tyranny

no matter how quick i was to hand you this hard-earned self-determination in the past, know that from now on, you are being watched. vigilantly.

flip it, spit it out in a poem, brand it on the tip
of your tongue
do whatever you have to do
to remember

the more i sit in your meetings
participate in your organizations
wake up next to you
shake hands with you, make deals with you
love you

the more i become an expert

in your don’t knows

like

you don’t know how to sit in a circle
so you plant yourself
in the middle

you don’t know who you are
instead you imitate my hair my clothes my art my food
my tongue my skin color,
even my soap operas

and it must be that no one has ever taught you
how to use a library card
because you don’t know how clueless you look
expecting your earnesty
to be compensation for my time

by now i am an over-qualified over-educated expert in the field of your don’t knows
where’s my degree? my big house? my fancy research job?
i’ve earned it

let me guess
you don’t know..

shy shy shy. when you approached me that night at the show, i couldn’t believe it was you. a blooming cross-continental friendship. connected by this silly blog i keep. even more beautiful in person.

i forgot to mention i was shy, huh? call myself a radical woman of color feminist, a disability right activist, a youth organizer but maybe i am just a quiet girl who doesn’t know what to do with herself. maybe systems are the only way i know how to talk. maybe it’s like he says— blahzay blah, what does that even mean, girl?

the third day comes and we are sitting together quietly. over and over again i tell you that i can’t believe you are here. we spend a lot of time sitting like that. smiling. so much to take in. it’s okay though, all the secrets we carry have already been shared. all that is left are merely the details of our lives.

maybe all of these things i do aren’t really about movement-building. maybe this is the only way i know how to deal with the alienation, the loneliness, of being a person of color in white space. asian in black brown space. queer in homophobic straight space. a conservative army town girl who randomly transformed into a lone lefty. simply calling all of this “identity politics” does not do my life justice- it misses the quietness, the sadness that comes with living at the borderlands, the constant compromise, the necessity of an intersectional politic. i didn’t choose to be a bridgebuilder.

i grab every person i know that walks by so they can meet you. the way you speak is so beautiful. words connect and flow out of your mouth like poetry. you are so sharp and on point with your perspective. you understand isolation & the beauty of coming together more than any one i know.

lately, i can’t push myself to move, to be productive. haven’t left the house in weeks. feels like i’m stuck, overwhelmed with nothingness. realizing that this may happen every time this year because i have spent the last few summers in community— not community as the folks you live near but chosen family community— and when you have to say goodbye to that & face the realities of your life… nothing feels like “enough”. my family is amaziiiiing- they are the kind who will massage you to sleep when you are hurting and stay up all night rotating toasty blankets for you when you are sick. but still. once you get to be who you are, fully, it’s hard to go back to this hiding.

need more of you in my life. let’s see each other again soon. love you, sister.

a transcript of the poem speak! radical women of color media justice collective read in the dark at the allied media conference opening. the theme of the conference was “we are ready now”:

Noemi: poetry? hmmm…do you want me to write poetry

( spoken through out auditorium by anybody and everybody we can get as
a murmur. after two lines are said, all say I speak I speak)

Elle:
with what
with whom
but how
who says
who said
how come
how long
which words
which way
my tone my tongue
my soul it lives
I speak

all: I SPEAK

Adele cracks silence to ask:

Adele: Why do you SPEAK?

Maegan:
hablo porque no me queda de otra
even though my tongue tangles spanglish mixed blood palabras
somehow they always translate into
love y lucha

Adele:
Speaking -my voice- is my faith

Faith that there are others like me
Faith that my voice has been heard
Faith that grows with me and never holds me back

I speak for protection
For love
For grounding
To remember I – we exist

Noemi:
feed writing, starve poetry

Little Light:
I speak because underneath my tongue and lips, my hips and hands,
behind my eyes and down my back is a skeleton: as mute and hard and
insistent as the bones of my ancestors. It demands that I give my
voice so they may speak.
They ask where the bones are buried, and remind me where my ghosts
are. They ask me from the ink in my marrow,
Who lies beneath your living feet as you walk?
and who has gone before while you go forward?
and who is silent when you are speaking?
and who is outside your Inside, and inside your guts?
and who do you belong to,
and who taught you beauty,
and on what do you stand, holding you steady from beneath, raising you high?
My skull clicks its teeth and asks me to listen. Through all my warm
and bloody flesh, where are the bones buried?
I speak
because underneath my eyes, my tongue and lips, my hips and hands, is
a skeleton:
as hard, and mute, and insistent as the bones of my ancestors, and the
bones in you.
It demands that I give my voice so the ghosts are heard, because
further under still, between my clutching ribs and fountain-pen spine,
I have a beating heart.
And so
I am ready.
Now.

cripchick:
revelations dance together in the caves of our mouths
webs of spit holding together poems not yet ready
tongue acting as transmitters
for every secret
you attempted to hide in the back of your throat
baby don’t you know?
…we are ready now.

Blackamazon:
One me many tongues
crossed tossed not mixed not muddled
run de
Shakespeare
iambic my creolese
hip hop overtures
Cr’est seulment pour une chose my voice
It is always better to speak.

Alexis:
brokenbeautifulbrownsweet
our half-baked edges
fused with coconut and sugarlust
hot filling my mouth with
yes
yes
yes
yes
possible
now

doesn’t matter if you’re disabled or gay or whatever, if you’re white and rich you can dream
people will call you a visionary
do what you do
in the end they will always respect you

but if you’re hustling to keep it together
if english is not your native tongue
if you don’t have the privilege of later,
if you are unbossed & you know that your name is your own
if you act like you deserve love
do what you do want to do, say what you want to say
be shut down, called crazy

sister you taught me that everything is a resource
when i say we are on the threshold of infinite potential
i mean i got you and i know you got me. i believe in your dreams
you shape me

voice shaky, don’t let me question the experiences that have created me
your truth is everything

–
i love you, think of you often

hey lady brown,

last week i heard someone say that our childhoods make us who we are. as you and i message back and forth on facebook talking about post-graduation plans i wonder about our paths, how we both became women of color (here i use women of color as a political label we take up as a banner of solidarity and commonality, not our non-whiteness). who introduced you to for colored girls…, D? how the hell did i stumble upon the RWOC blogosphere and this bridge?

in middle school, we had every white lady wrapped around our fingers. amazing what a quirky black girl & a sweet asian girl in a wheelchair can do to win the hearts of white people everywhere. their open fascination with us made it so easy. smart colored girls they could give love to, even if they never said it out loud. i don’t know how this worked for you but this is how i got the accommodations i needed, never had any problems at IEP meetings because i had every person in power feeling like they had adopted me (spanglish is so my movie). mixed girl with second generation immigrant roots, i’ve been speaking dominant culture language since i first learned how to talk. with case managers, teacher’s assistants, school nurses, and guidance counselors, i had so many white women intimately involved in my life, shaping who i was.

in high school i went to a conference for disabled youth leaders. shy girl and overwhelmed by so much disability, i didn’t talk to anyone, but the event changed my life. i talk a lot about community and that’s why— once you experience being in community, going back to shields, walls, and the isolation that comes from denying yourself parts of you is not an option. after that conference, i jumped into the youth arm of the disability rights movement. white people everywhere, i had a gubernatorial appointment at age 16, started an organization at 17, and by 18, was persuading various state agencies to let me be responsible for thousands of unmarked dollars. catapulted into a beautiful community, i devoted my life to this and was still lonely. tongue still tailored to them, unspoken racism and unchecked privilege had me unable to completely claim this home.

after doing that for three years, i completely retreated from that scene and submerged myself in radical oganizing and local work that put us at the center. co-organized an anti-racism and economics forum last fall attended by people of color looking for the analysis to speak to collective experience. worked with SPEAK! women of color media collective to create and distribute a spoken word CD that is being used in classrooms, bookstores, and learning circles. other young disabled people and i created our own youth leadership model and then hosted our first youth leadership forum. helped youth leadership org be rebirthed into the disabled young people’s collective. worked to get a disability history bill passed in NC leg. am leading a group in starting a center for independent living since our area is so underserved. serving as prez for the org. that created me. somewhere along the way, i started writing poetry. people like us are my life and i can’t even pretend like things that aren’t relevant to us are important. too tiring to go back to that old way of being. i can’t do politics, don’t have time the energy to act like i care.

so now i am balancing all of this and a lot of days, (like yesterday) i feel like the world is crumbling. the work is so connected to personal relationships and i am so emotionally-dependent on the people i am in community with. it’s all so high stakes now too, if something doesn’t come through it can mean us not coming together this summer or someone moving into an institution. when i fail at something, it is hard because the people i love most are counting on me and i have let them down.

but today i am setting my own pace and even though i am overdue on 5 or 6 things and have not responded to email in two weeks, i think everything is going to be okay.

how are you, girl? congratulations on graduating, everyday i tell my sister to be like you. i know you are doing amazing things. hit me up when you’re free.

love always,
cripchick