Earlier this week I lost my language, again. The first time I lost it I didn’t even know it was missing. I grew up speaking another culture’s language learned commas and nouns and metaphor poetry essays thesis statements ampersands quotations alliteration consonants and subordinating conjunctions. I took what I learned and taught myself how to be a poet.
Earlier this week I felt deserted and alienated from this society in a way that was so foreign to me I had to look in the mirror to see if I was a teenager growing up in the 90s all over again. I took it all for granted. No amount of activism, awareness, legislation, or gallantry will ensure my safety or protect my body. How foolish I was to think I stopped being a teenager in danger for their life.
By now it’s hard to navigate this fucked-up country without hearing about the heartbreaking Orlando, Florida, Pulse nightclub shooting. 49 dead, 53 injured, and countless others traumatized, violated, and hurting. 49 more human beings who will be buried in a country that was founded on principles of colonization, genocide, forced entry, violence, rape, and white privilege.
I lost my language. As an artist I lost any significant visual articulation. As a writer and poet I lost my ability to gather the tragic events into clusters of words coherent enough to help dig a grave, dismantle an empire, or even look another person in the eye without feeling humiliated.
This was like 49 Matthew Shepards. This was like the AIDS virus assaulting the body at the speed of sound. This was like learning about the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples of this country, or the “strangers” and slaves of Native American and African descent. This was like waking up on the morning of September 11th.
This was like uranium attacking the body cancer forming along the bone a run-on sentence flash flood that carries away all the food you harvested for the longest winter before you were forced to worship a god that cannot heal the land that cannot bring a body back to life that cannot dismantle an empire that cannot dig a grave that cannot turn guns bombs or corrosive acid into organic vegetation sturdy homes miracle pills tender beds or strong arms that reach into the quicksand to recover a village then quickly turns into loving hands that take you out onto the dance floor for your favorite song.
So I turned to the queer poets who lifted me from the trenches dusted off debris and kissed my eyelids while reminding me that this war zone was not my home reminded me to be thankful for what language I have reclaimed as my own reminded me to continue mourning and fighting for a decolonized world where my body is sacred once more sacred even though once more toxic and once more filtering human pain pollution violence and deafening blinding love sacred once more sacred in this textbook universe. A queer body once more sacred.
Yesterday, I spent the day compiling a few poems and excerpts into an eight-page zine from poets who helped remedy this grief: Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, and Suheir Hammad. Because my community extends outward beyond the imaginary boundaries of heart home state country and land. I offer this remedy to all of you. For the young Indigenous Queers and Queers of Colour who need the support safety confidence and love love love moving onward through this post-apocalyptic war zone. Above all this is for the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. For the victims of violence bigotry racism jealousy manipulation hypermasculinity and unresolved unrecognizable toxic temperaments on this beautiful and bewildering planet cast into space.
This is my hand extended my warm hug my soft shoulder my lovers kiss my hand helping to hold the banner my prayer offered while I imagine a decolonized prayer a decolonized country a decolonized heart and a decolonized future.
This is one tool among many.
There are others to help heal.
Share them with one another.
You can save the .jpg image above or download the PDF here:
http://www.filedropper.com/yrmangledheart
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