EMERGING FEMINISMS, for the professor who hurt me & got away with it

By Martina “Mick” Powell

*”Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival Forum Contribution*

 

i will let you have this & nothing

more.

 

palm molasses palm into your mouth

until i’m a temple of all the thank you and tender,

all the bra and panty, the slack jaw and wet eye,

all the everything that i have taken off

to look less naked in your stare:

all the tuesday, the fluorescent,

all the dirty and gold gleam and dry tongue

that fucks your name out of my mouth.

 

all the questions for me:

how pretty do you think you are?

do you delude yourself into chrysanthemum and lotus,

into thin skin and delicate bone?

you carry your breasts so heavy, how could you expect

them not to look, not to water for milk, not to knead

greedy fingers in search for gold?

if he hit you, where are the bruises?

if he hit you, where are the bruises?

are they between your legs? what’s between your legs

that makes him so mad?

you sparkle your eyelid to catch an eye and get mad

when an eye is caught; you are girl and dumb and wanting

for something we cannot give you,

we will not give you,

you can have this & nothing

more.

 

all the questions for you:

do black girls make you afraid

of your own thirst?

do they put pennies in your throat

to stack you by something hard so

they’re not the only ones who are choking anymore?

do they call you kingdom, in your dreams,

kiss you with their copper mouths, in your dreams,

in your dreams,

do they make you cum?

do they make you cum?

 

i become / a carousel waiting to stop spinning

and i’m spinning and i make my metal insides lullaby,

begin doting on the smallest of things

so they feel pretty and big and big and bigger.

until the metal is inside out and nobody wants to touch it,

stick tips of wet fingers in for the electric shock,

or stack copper on my chest so there’s a real reason

i can’t get out of bed. i can’t get out of bed,

i don’t get out of bed and you can’t know why

i’m dry heaving nuts & bolts & your name in a parking lot

and nobody’s catching my breath,

my breath is not catching in my mouth

and my mouth is so wet, so slippery,

does it make you cum?

 

did i make you come for me?

 

can you be sorry? can you be somewhere else

if all your body is still here?

 

and all the body,

and all the body,

and all the body, if it’s something

that melts,

let mine.

**********

Martina “Mick” Powell is a queer black feminist poet who uses she/her pronouns and likes revolutionary acts of resistance. She is a recent graduate from the University of Connecticut where she obtained a B.A. in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies and a concentration in Creative Writing. Mick loves performance poetry, magnolia trees, hip hop music, and tea. She is one of the Associate Editors of the Emerging Feminisms section at The Feminist Wire.