- Negative Compliment or Contemplations on Racist Rhetoric
You don't see the back of your own wordsthe ones grazing my face, the almost humin summon on your tongue, to dig a hole& place me in, just so my brown body makessense to you, to lower in your vision, your scoopas to think my bones for collection, for descentas in a placement that you control. I shut my eyes,rest my hand gently upon your shoulder, evento my own shoulder; I've come to let you: let goof the tick in the back of your throat, the murmurof your fragility, of what makes you scared of whatI will take away. Open your eyes: see me: brown& powerful & releasing this weight you left hereupon my brain, my capillaries, my nervous system.These are yours. Take your words & let them burnto ash, so the flame of them cinders the message &stings your taste buds, so you inhale your own grit,your own sour smell in your lungs, so your words maybecome phoenixes & learn from the scars & searsthey inflicted, become all genders, grow out of eachof your ribs & spread wings of billowing tufts of plumeto release you—out of your own spinal axis—the drill in the trench you continue to dig & dig & dig. [End Page 84]
Felicia Zamora is the author of five books of poetry including Quotient (Tinder-box Editions, forthcoming), Body of Render, winner of the 2018 Benjamin Saltman Award, and Of Form & Gather, winner of the 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She's received fellowships and residencies from CantoMundo, Ragdale Foundation, PLAYA, Moth Magazine, and Martha's Vineyard, authored two chap-books, and won the 2019 Wabash Prize for Poetry and 2015 Tomaž Salamun Prize, and she was the 2017 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO. She teaches creative writing online at Colorado State University and is associate poetry editor for Colorado Review and program manager for the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University.