We Leave the World Outside [Preface on Street Harassment]

This is an older piece, that addresses street violence and harrassment.  As a gender non conforming person of color, street harassment is an everyday reality.  It always astounds me how much the violence increases when I am traveling with a perceived "femme." I can write some of the violence off as patriarchy, homophobia, fear, but intellectualizing it still doesn't take away the after effects of violence, my body literally tenses up.  I am constantly thinking about negotiating space, when not to hold hands, which group of cis-men I should avoid, I constantly think about my safety and my partner/lover's safety.  I also think about how as queer people this effects our interpersonal relationships.   When the outside world DOES creep into our beds, how do we take care of ourselves?  How do we empower ourselves in a world that strips us of dignity and attempts to make us feel ashamed of who we are.  What psychological and physical effects does this have on our community as a whole?

I have done searches online on safety planning specifically for street harassment for Queer folks and I've yet to find any.  Most resources are centered on intimate partner violence (straight & queer), but what about stranger violence?    If you have resources please share. I will repost.

be safe.
-Cris
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We Leave the World Outside
for M

Beneath my red, pink, yellow stripped sheets

trace your flushed

cheeks with my thumb

kiss the corners of your mouth

Leave the world outside


See, outside in the world

our kind of love

is met with purple bruises

crimson splatter concrete, fists and broken teeth

bones split so easily

words shatter sternum

“Bitch! Dyke! Faggot!

You wanna be a man?

I’ll show you what a man is”


Inside, we mend love

suture muscle and flesh

using lips and tongue

“Saturate me” you say

I let the tears fall

heavy as sin

onto your collarbone

Leave the world outside


Lover, I fear

my skin and bones

aren’t steel

aren’t enough

to protect you

To risk a kiss on the Q train

to risk touching your face

on Ocean Avenue

before the change of a traffic light

to hold your lifeline in mine


At night I dream

the world is trying to get inside

underneath our sheets

onto our bodies

I wake up gasping for air

You pull me by my chin

Pull the red, pink, yellow stripped sheets

Over our heads

“Leave the world outside.”

JUSTIN WOO [Guest Poet]

Dear fellow word lovers,

I met this amazing poet at Honoring Brandon Lacy Campos: A Night of  Poetry and Story, an event I helped to organize.   Below is a piece he wrote and read at the event.  I was immediately swooned by his cunning eye for detail and intimate way of describing a moment.  He agreed to have his piece published here.  Enjoy!

-Cris

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Untitled

We met through a friend,
and I was immediately taken in.
Beautiful, with a whiskey shot smile,
all deep warmth.

After a few hours
of dicussing racial politics together,
I asked him
what his ethnicity was
and he laughed.

Before I could stammer out
an apology, he said,
that’s okay,
said he got that
all the time
then went on to describe
the beautiful branching roots
of his heritage
(black, white, Afro-Boricua, Ojibwe)
over spicy dumplings in Chinatown.

Sad stories always have this cute little beginning
that you thought nothing of
at the time, and looking back
you wish you had carved your names
into concrete somewhere,
so this moment had a memorial

Brandon invited my girlfriend and I
to his house to play
Axis and Allies.
He played Japan. I played America.
He cooked us spicy pancit.
His dog Mimzy growled at her reflection.
My girlfriend passed out on my lap.
We never finished the game.
Followed each other
on Facebook,
always said
we should hang out again,
never got a chance.

These time-sharpened
remembrances break
into staccato sentences
as I count off the anniversaries of death
until I forget to do so,
and I too fade,
and turn someone else’s
first memory
into a sad story.

Every lost friend is an unfinished game.
A war without armistice,
a barrage of gunfire
locked in still life,
a million soldiers
that never find their way home. 


Justin Woo is a Rutgers graduate, Jersey City resident, and Chinese-American poet, theatre artist, audio engineer, and DJ. He has performed at universities and theatres in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, including the 2007 NYC Fringe Festival and the Tony Award-winning Crossroads Theatre. He has collaboratively created several multidisciplinary spoken word theatre pieces, and is currently working with Dreamweavers Theater Company to co-write “It Would Take Armageddon.” He was also a member of the 2011 J.C. Slam team.

His goal is to encourage positive social and political change through the creation and performance of startling, extraordinary poetry and theatre.

**You can catch Justin Woo THIS weekend Dec 14-16th 2012 at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe for The Spoken Word Almanac Project 2012 


You can also find him here:
facebook.com/justinwooartist
twitter.com/justinwooartist
justinwoo.wordpress.com

To: Mama [Post Card Poem]

 

Mama,

I am eating the last grains of rice you cooked for me 

It took you longer to make this time 

Your hands quick sparrows
sometimes sharp as autumn wind

are now two knots

each finger swollen into branches

 

You say you are going to light a candle

for Chamuel arch angel of love

You worry that love can't find me
I don’t tell you that I push love away

I don’t talk about

the pain

rising through my chest

like high tide

Pain comes unceremoniously

as you cross the street
knees buckle, under the weight of gravity

lift your leg up onto bus stair

pain topples you backwards

Wash out your favorite mug

it strikes bolting from wrist to elbow

I sob sometimes thinking about her hair

I don’t tell you that

I learned another woman’s body better than my own

slope of her back

her skin the color of packed sand

on her forearm

a birthmark the shape of a candy wrapper

 

I tell you to hold on to me

as we cross the street

Your body has grown small

and it sways in the wind

In the mornings

you make coffee and tell me stories

about being brought up by 3 women

common story in Nicaragua

men leave, women come together

to raise up their children

Your mother was only 16 when she had you

somehow the women manage

Espiritu indomable

 

Out of the front of their home

they ran a convenience store

your tia Elia couldn’t read or write

but knew exactly how much

each customer owed her

In your child handwriting

you wrote out the receipts for her

 

 

Saturday afternoon

we go to Delgado Travel

A poner un dinerito

everyone is brown here

Guayaquil, Managua, San Salvador

Para donde va? Quien lo manda? Y Quien recibe?

Who sends and who receives?

You send money to your God daughter

the one who is named after you

The address you give:

“One block from where the old pharmacy used to be

And half a block east”

No names to the streets

 

Monday 5:00am

year fifteen of working for the DOE

you have gotten up extra early to finish

work, they are testing the kindergarten kids now

You say, it’s a way to push black and brown children to drop out

before they reach the fifth grade

 

I ask if you want me to type your lesson plan

no need to talk about the pain in your twisted up hands

or in my decomposing heart

I begin

Shift

capital

K -i-n-d-e-r-g-a-r-t-e-n

 

-C.Izaguirre

Free Woman

12/12/12 My aunties, the ones who taught me how to farm in Kona, HI are celebrating the rise of the sun in Pu'uhonoa women's temple today.  They are singing E Ale E "Arise/Awake" and welcoming in feminine energy.  
I wrote this poem several years ago for a theater group that I was once a part of, it was my first time doing theater/spoken word... and I am grateful for having learned so much from that experience, this is my tribute to them, as well as a celebration to guerilleras everywhere.  To the 7 generations before me and 7 generations after I'm long gone.


------------------
Free Woman 

One day they will talk story about you
How you would dip the tips of your breasts
in the soft mouth of a running brook
leave your fingerprints on the gray skull of a rock
 
How you would laugh
mouth open, legs spread to the sky
filling your belly with sun
 
"Daughter of Oshun"
they will say
You somersaulted over clouds
sweet curves of brown
swayed oceans with your hips
 
"Sister of Oya"
They will say
you carried a sword between your teeth
and the four winds in your hair
made armies fall with your battle cry
Wove melodies together with time
 
You will be called
Holy woman, singer, warrior, leader, conjurer, dancer, poet, lover
Your names will be held sacred
Hanifah, Ganessa, Jaz, Chaney, Ashley, Nicki

Your names will be held sacred
because you carved out of bone
out of blood, movement  and song
A place for your tribe to grow.

-C.Izaguirre 
All rights reserved

We Poets [Poem In Formation]

We Poets
immortalize our lovers

we say things like:
your skin is like
a lullaby

we say, 
your hair
reminds me of 
my mother
dark and stubborn

we say,
your breasts
are slow burning
slopes
where my mouth
loses its' name

we say,
your eyes
they cut 
right 
through 
me
like wind through
autumn branches

I reach 
for my lovers 
in my dreams
lovers long lost and
ones who left
the night before
“wait!” I say, one hand
outstretched

reach for the shape of 
your body
in this too honest
night.



-C. Izaguirre 2012

Patriarchy to Ana Castillo [Postcard Poem]

This poem is based off of Ana Castillo's book So Far From God.  A novel that shaped my younger years when I was searching for words to describe my experience and identity as a Latin@/woman of color in the US.  The style of Post Card poem is taken from another poet by the name of Marty McConnell who had a series of post cards written in different voices to her or by her to someone else.  Enjoy!
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From: Patriarchy To: Ana Castillo


who told you, you could write about
jaguar women
who said you could speak
about bleeding ripped nipples
who allowed you to turn women's meaningless lives
into tomes

who do you think you are
writing about men like that?
boogey men bent over wooden figures
obsessing over the inability to tame women



who said you could reveal our deepest secrets
crushed hymens bruised purple, crusted in crimson
then our daily resurrections
Christ-like we fly into the atmosphere
immaculate like we were never punctured, beatened, disfigured
who told you you could write about the everyday smell of sulfur

every day open game for some man's hunt
vigilantly reminding us of our place at the end of a gun
Bruja, Curandera who told you
you could use your own
menstrual blood as ink

how dare you speak in two languages
paint metaphors with your tongue
who said you could write about the mares
whispering future into the threads of our dreams


How dare you let those two women
jump off the face of a cliff
how dare they not be held captive
held accountable for their girl child dreams
how dare you let them run into the azure sky
boundless


-C.Izaguirre 2009

New York City,

At 4:54 am you pull
the crimson curtains shut
refuse dawn her entry
we give into
your brutal softness
& the pounding vibrations
of another spinning record

We are your bastard children
the ones who run the streets aimless
never having known your breast

We are the boys
spray painting you blue
claiming you as our territory ‘cause
we believe ourselves invincible
You watch as we
crack and collide

We are the girls
baring our hard nipples
shaking our thighs
dancing until needles break
and toes dislocate
split open our wrists
for you

We are the lovers who
crossed oceans and sold our fortunes
on a whim 'cause we believe all the stories
about your pussy tasting like wine
and your eyelashes of gold
we believe our shimmering dreams
and lover’s song will bed you our wife

You let the symphonies and
painted postcards
live on every street corner
’cause you are always hungry
and dreams feed your vanity...

You give what you can
amphetamines, neon signs
cheap plastic and busted capillaries
make your lovers cum and bleed
at the same time
then tell them to

"GET THE FUCK OUT"
the rent is too high.

Your spine runs electric
from Coney Island to Pelham Bay
Seduce April and May
pin your hair up with cherry blossoms
scent of ginger between your breasts
even the August moon wants a taste of you

Bury your secrets deep
bury them deep
in the pit of your womb
shattered bones
of your first children

Senaca, Cayuga, Lenape

The only ones who knew your skin
free and open to the wind

before the ships and steel
before the calloused hands of Wall Street

The tribes gathered

Congo, Benin, Ashanti
bringing drums and incense
We gather bring you
drums and incense

Sometimes you accept our offerings
spread the dawn of your skirt
to sit silent &
hear us tell your story.

 -C.Izaguirre 2009