ask me

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the radicalagitator tagged me in a meme that asked me to describe myself in a 6 words. I chose “i am tears, i am beauty” and worked it into this poem i’ve been playing around with for a while. i tag anyone that wants to play (cheating? yeah well this post isn’t exactly 6 words anyways). : )

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ask me

ask me what i am,
who i love,
where i go
and i’ll always give you the truth

i am tears.
i am beauty.

i’ll tell you that in back breaking labor, my ancestors chopped and weeded sugarcane
working hard but making little,
the american dream never clothed them
instead its people, perpetuators of this so-called dream, treated my own like foreigners and kept them poor and hungry

but before the sugarcane and the railroads and the ching chong taunts, they were the joseon people
witnesses of a six thousand year history
one of the first to make language accessible with phonetics
a force against colonialism
people of a flourishing culture

ask me who i am again and this time i’ll tell you that the existence of my people is denied
disabled and dichotomously thought to be broken or inspirationally saint-like,
we are taught to be beggars, to take what we can get and be happy
our culture is invalidated by those who “know better” and we are cast as burdens, as though our disabilities— and not the system’s inadequacy—makes us so

but when we are in community,
where we learn to be militantly proud and beautiful
we are flowers, not weeds
we grow and our seeds go with the wind
a wind that will take them through struggle and through greatness
towards an unknown, potentially promising future

i am tears.
i am beauty.

ask me who i am and i’ll tell you that womyn of color have been silenced by a feminism that likes to speak for everyone, even if it’s by stealing
how can i be okay with this when you are erasing our very existence?
this is not about blogging, it never was
instead we as a people are again constantly denied, and like the other parts of me, told to be beggars
accept what scraps we get—a mention in a book, a hat tip— and keep our heads down, voices quiet

but in our families, in our circles of friends, these womyn are the celebrators
loud-even-when-soft-spoken matriarchs
observers of tradition
keepers of the family, the glue, the searchers of the truth.
these womyn are the creators, the originals

ask me what i am,
who i love,
where i go
and i’ll always tell you
this is who i am.

i am tears.
i am beauty.

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Filed under API-A, community, disability, i love my people, intersections, woc, writing/poetry