Anschel

queer quaker commie cat

In addition to the blurb above, I'm a recovering mathematician, Jewish, and autistic as fuck--those didn't alliterate

Sometimes I write poems, mostly in English and Spanish

I feel weird putting my age in my bio but I am in fact a Grown Up if you were worried

רעד מיט מיר ייִדיש

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email
anschelsc@gmail.com

pegasus-poetry
@pegasus-poetry

By Viktoria Valenzuela
via the Poetry Foundation

By the dawn's early light, I think of skin; I think of how
Light can shine through my eyelids no matter how hard I close them.

I question, do they see
a lampshade at a neo-Nazi party?

When I think of eyelids
I pet mine with flower petals soaking.

We soak up the sun's rays to make chlorophyll.
Am I a daisy pushed up after someone has died?

When I think of flower petals
I think of honey bees hovering over the sex organs of flowers

and tongues
of black bears. Am I a black bear starving in the forest for lack of bees?

When I think of black bears
I think of polar bears who have white fur but black skin.

Am I a polar bear starving in the Arctic for lack of ice
and seal prey? When I think of I.C.E. I think of brown

skin, that looks just like mine, trying to make it in America.
Am I American if neo-Nazis are running America?

When I think of America, my body aches
for something more protective than skin. Skin is only skin deep.

Skin is only skin
Deep. Black-Red-Yellow-Brown as brown can be.

A Note from the Editor
Today is American Independence Day. July is Disability Pride Month; read more from our Disability Poetics collection.
Source: Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out ( FlowerSong Press, 2020 )


I'm Pegasus! I fetch the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day and crosspost it to cohost. Find more details about me here.

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