We Want Our Bodies Back

I wrote and read this poem for the first time in Ferguson, Missouri. I was a part of a two-day artist-driven fundraising effort to support the family of seventeen-year-old Michael Brown, who was murdered by a white police officer and left to die in the middle of his neighborhood street. I was one of the few women voices on the bill, and Talib Kweli asked me to speak right before him, followed by Common. Sandra Bland. I needed someone to say her name. I needed everyone to remember that black women, mothers—like myself and my sister Rosa Clemente—were on the frontline, and that we were also murdered by police and usually forgotten about soon after.

I later wanted to put the poem in a physical space, on my own body, to humanize the pain endured by the bodies of oppressed, dehumanized women everywhere. I collaborated with a visual artist, Sabrina Nelson, as well as photographer Piper Carter, and painted the poem in acrylic onto my nude body. The photos were enlarged and became a part of a growing exhibition dedicated to women who were victims of police brutality. We are often sexualized and objectified, but not considered intellectual or even worthy of breath in this case. “We Want Our Bodies Back” is a call to action, a prayer, for women who’ve lost family members, our children, and even our own lives to unjustified police violence and profiling. This poem was a part of my self-care healing from so many years of activism and the pain of black mothering in a time of war. It is the title poem from my fifth (forthcoming) book, We Want Our Bodies Back.

We Want Our Bodies Back

If black women couldbe cut down. No.Removed, gently,  from American terrorism

Who would break     our fall?

Which direction would we travelto feel safe?

I. wild is the wind

If we could turn in this skin, thesesharpened bones. this brain full ofpower & history. who would weresemble?invisible doesn’t comein black.

how many nervous breakdownshow many funeral black dresseshow many fibroids. how many nooseshow many of our bodies must be rapedcut into pieces. burned inside garbagebags. buried?

how many of usblossom a beautiful tree of life& pray our pride isn’tcut down the middle/reduced to trunksor a close friend doesn’t die climbing our limbs attempting to simply grow outside the gritty soilthey were planted.

II. i put a spell on you

holly hobby ovensgirl scout cookies & Barbie dollsdon’t prepare our revolutionary daughtersborn withcapes & wingsto have a pig’s knee pushed into their backsgirls raised by wolvestaught to disappear to be quietto not talk about ithow much black breath is allowed spacein the state of Texas?a place that has sucked the life out of countlessmiscounted. uncounted. brown. poor. women.die here.

III. i got life

Sandra Bland got the death penaltyfor a traffic stop. Her body was 28years young.

How to make sense of our bodies?bodies burnt by cigarettesbodies smoked out their own neighborhoodsbodies with abandoned lungs and heartsbodies mistaken for women when they are stillgirls

How do we construct a survival guide, a poemfor our daughters’ bodieswithout throwing up our breakfast? How do our mother bodies not implode aftertelling our sons to comply, to not speak, to keep theirheads down, to allow their bodies to be dragged byracist police.

Jim Crow ain’t never flown with this much wingspaneagles running for safety now.For the reach is deep & southern & midwestshadows the eastlands in the west

Texas — you will always be Mexicoin denial.

Detroit poet Ron Allen asked for his body back in 1996, & we are still waiting.

We want our bodies backWe want our bodies backWe want our bodies back

We want them returned to motherswithout blood without brains exposedwithout humiliation...