As the
incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on
freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential
voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united
against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty,
and community.
In this
spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the
rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems
of resistance, power, and resilience.
We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language
that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful
stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.). After
the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to
the White House.
***
The Holy Temple of Drag
for Pulse
By Rasha Abdulhadi
I sweat out my fever that
night
in the holy temple of drag,
watching my baby sister in a
mustache and codpiece
invite us all to take a walk
on the wild side,
wholly supplicant to the
divine glamdrogyny
that could be called down to
dance through you
if you could wrestle free
enough
if you could accept into
your heart the saving power
of glitter. and rock-n-roll.
and rhythm-n-blues.
and stank nasty love songs
sung along from every stall
in the gender neutral milk
hotel
every friday, saturday, and
sunday night
offering a new watermark on
your excitement
Until this sunday,
when
my fever was breaking,
and you were dying, you and
your partner, you and your
mother, you and the
bartender and bouncer and the 18 year old
girl dancing her heart out
and I can’t understand
how you weren’t me or my
sister
with our shaved-head
glitter-eye swagger
or
our friends, our drag sistren and brethren
in a neighboring state where
we partied
in defiance of laws that
tried to deputize and sanctify hate
and
I wondered
if the fbi had baited a hook
whose sharp sting
went sideways-- or worse, if
that barb
landed right where aim sent
it
none of us,
blackbrownredyellowqueer
tongues embroidered by other
languages,
have expected safety for a
long time, if we ever could or did
I do not mistake police or
politicians for my friends
no matter what the press
statement says
My best allies have always
been resistance. Rebellion
really brings out my eyes. I
find courage
is a look anyone can pull
off and sanctuary
exists only in the
interstices we hold open for each other.
and
I wondered too
if this was personal, a
story about the hidden body
of the gay Muslim—as
occluded as the twelfth imam
who one day prophesy says
may return
perhaps then gentle in form
as a rainstorm
whose lips fear no kiss.
and
it seems that nothing
will feel like justice until
we heal
and that I must give myself
to my nieces and nephews
like a bridge.
My
southern, my muslim,
my arab, my baptist, my palestinian,
my buddhist, my queer butch eyeliner
families, hear me: my self
feels like the battlefield over which the daily news is
fought, the truth spiraled
downfield to mark gains
for one military or another
while I’m trying to hold the
world inside my skin
and calling all my kin to
hear how they’re hanging on.
and
you—
you texted your mother that
night
to tell her you loved her.
may I, on the night I die,
with the best of my courage,
have the last words on my
lips be
I love you. I love you world that broke
me, I love you slaying
hand, I love you betraying friend, I love
you
family that would not see me, I do not
fear you for I knew my silence
would not save me, make me invisible or
hide me from surveillance
that can find, detain, deport, or execute
me just as surely
as the hand of any man trying to terrorize
my temple,
and so I will not surrender these sacred
spaces
or let them become mute monuments. I am
not here to hug any racist,
and even if we will never be safe:
it is you I am am pledged to, always.
