Privilege

By M. Carmen Lane

you
are only
interested
in the dead
pieces of
me

black woman
raped/
tracked
by white men
with bottles
stones

lesbian/
who lost
her lover

daughter
witness to
too much
violence

suicide/
dull blade
time release
pills

mother/
baby that
never took
its first
breath

Indian
without
his song

father/
whose
children were
stolen because
they are
queer

addict/ hands
dried with
nicotine &
blood

you are
only interested
in the grief &
trauma

a moaning song

eyes that
have seen
too much

nose that
smells your
shit from
afar

feet soppy
of your
entitled
mess

shrunk
down
powerful

sweeping/
your house
to a horrifying
clean

parts
left on
the dying
tree/ rotting
flesh dried on
an old rope

your daddy’s
whipping post/
crucified in a
jail cell/ dusty
road to
drag me
limp

he/
who was
between
an ancestor’s
legs

bastard
runaway

musician
stopped
at the edge
of jazz

poet/ never
shared her
good words

dancer/ who
dared not
to deform
her feet

warrior
whose
resistance
warranted
no tale

listen closely
you sonofabitch

those parts
of me
alive &
well/
untangled
smooth
as a scar

they/ are
coming for

you


Copyright © M. Carmen Lane. All Rights Reserved.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. Carmen Lane (African-American/Mohawk/Tuscarora) is a poet, cultural worker and consultant. Carmen's work has been published in Red Ink Magazine, The Yellow Medicine Review and is a contributor to the Lambda Literary Award nominated anthology Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature.  She is the author of Calling Out After Slaughter 
www.lanecatalytics.com





Sky Woman

By M. Carmen Lane

uprooted

& pushed
through

stillness
came for
me

there was
nothing
left to do
but fall

onto the
smooth/
bumpy back
of Turtle

watch

as Nana’s
primordial
soil spreads
bringing
equilibrium

woods
& water

purpose
unknown/
this new
world
is waiting
for you
my sons

I pass on
pregnant
thoughts
of good will/
possibility

unmoving
&
unable to
let all
the grief
go

I carried too
the shadow
side of
joy

tangled
energy

my offspring
will play out
this tension
over & again

my head on
a pike

even ceremony
will not be
enough

we must
examine again
our resistance

like the
ancestors
uprooted/
falling
through
into new
life


Copyright © M. Carmen Lane. All Rights Reserved.

M. Carmen Lane, author of Calling Out After Slaughter







M. Carmen Lane (African-American/Mohawk/Tuscarora) is a poet, cultural worker and consultant. Carmen's work has been published in Red Ink Magazine, The Yellow Medicine Review and is a contributor to the Lambda Literary Award nominated anthology Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature. 
www.lanecatalytics.com



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