Showing posts with label M. Carmen Lane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label M. Carmen Lane. Show all posts

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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