transhistorical for the x in gxrl
for Nani and Sophia, for Brontë, for Sentura, for Nabi and urrbody with an x
v.
i too/ have wasted
my magic escaping the focus
of white male insecurity/
like a liar i’ve called it
supremacy/ it makes me no more
a fool than it makes them god/
what’s in a name?
i was still born and limp
at my birth/ labored
from this jaw
comes a new sound/ womxn
in lieu of bitch
gxrl/ an entendre
untethered from the gut/ of men
vii.
as far as births are
concerned/ first there was Phillis
then other griots followed
like a bloodlet/ another one there
climbing through the window
of an ivory tower/ more of them
afterward/ in darker
and darker droves
i am of a riot/ bastard tongue/ born
writhing in the both/and practically
illegible in multiplicity/ where two or more
are gathered it is my mouth
sneering/ into the margin’s margin
i write hungrily/ a mastication
once/ i read of a writer
named Dove/ and envisioned myself
flying/ then a gxrl like me/ Lovelace
i rename myself a bound book
somewhere/ a library weeps with sudden
pages of shocking Black flesh
a white man told me this literacy
was a failure/ and perhaps it was (his.)
i find antithesis to be a powerful origin
(see here/ i am not a monster
i have no fangs/ have killed no one
nor prayed into the mouths of men)
a white woman ain’t me
and so must be her smallest self
which is to say i am/ that i am
you is/ whatever i’ve left to rot
a white woman ain’t me
and so must be her smallest self
which is to say i am/ that i am
you is/ whatever i’ve left to rot
which of us becomes the fable
if the other disappears?
viii.
whereas the i can only attest
and x consents to none of it/
each violence assigned
at birth/ the genital matter bloodied into a name
what’s in a name?
i witness/ i is complicit and so allows
x into the soil/ sows possibility and mud
i chew
i swallow
and become
gxrl [here!] [here!] [here!]
i.
god ain’t no different than gxrl
marrow of stars alive in our hands
magical/ terrified/ sovereign
our names our own/ finally
iron-soiled/ brimming
with the curse of silt/ what’s in them
conjurers or architects?
gxrl as in/ a whole world
made flesh of our dark/ flesh
we call it rootwork/ this building
each new break
wielding a god body
vi.
i like simple violence
censured into fiction
and x the Black
rhetorical/ christ conjuring
(does the author consider this art
catastrophe or crucifixion)
not to say i am god/ but to imply
i been left/ to fester in the sun
like a sore for a city
folk gather at my palms to view
they own holes/ wounds to mark
where myths entered/ where disgust made exit
hole in our skulls perhaps imagined/ body
whittled into petit metaphor
cast in bronze/ wrapped in barbed
teeth/ pocket body
barely even a name to hold
the flesh to bone yet/ holy
ii.
they pulled me from my almighty mother
and the doctors couldn’t find my face
smacked their palms against my bloody
flesh to see which end
of me made the most noise
followed the cord that tethered
my mother to me and discovered a neck
strangled/ nutrient dense leather
gargled and gargoyled i fought/ for air
and so yes/ my birth was not
unlike a lynching
my mother weeping/
my mother surrounded
by men readying their knives harvest parts of me
if ever i gave up the struggle
hours-long was this fight for life my little heart blistering
into bloom. the story hasn’t changed
iv.
what i mean is this/ country
is mine if only because
from my mouth i spit its loam
and unspin a noose/ i won’t exploit my name
the only metaphor i was given
instead/ i hunt/ for x/ for vicious
edges/ and build myself a muse
yes/ i earned this country
i owe it nothing
with my infinite infant hand
i manipulated/ death sentences
into a single compound-complex one
out the umbilical/ i bled/ a life worth writing
down/ and in a century’s time there will be another
word created still for subversion tactics in/ an unaming
the alternative alchemy/ a Black gxrl’s first breath.
***
Photograph of Aurielle Marie by Natasha Dangond.
