natalie hanna
from concealed weapons
i loved the man who called me sandn_gger
as much as the one who called me passing
too brown for a white man /
white for brown
but both said to me sister
calling down the shades
to shame me
i am tired of the men telling me i am too angry
tired of being the unfathomed well
into which poison is poured
from which sweet water hauled
all the tools for boring at the ready
telling me i am too tolerant
of the knuckles of white girls
against my body
of tar tongues drawing out syllables
in reply to my mother's accent
tired of those who wish i would grind for them
the earth against the sky
while i am trying to live
who want to burn up one truth
for another in their sorrow
who say diaspora upon you
as casually as good morning
as knife and fork to eat you up
one morsel at a time, o where
does this little piece of you go?
be delicious, be
a joyless joan of arc in your
browness, called
to omniscient pinnacle
taking my trust / my money / my labour /
my love / my time
never washing my dish
saying goodbye
and calling me too tolerant
and too angry.
i am as lonely as you
without people
grown alongside
lived alongside
loved alongside
so many white bodies
as if to be only
/
i sit inside a call to prayer, quiet like static, muted bees.
eager for the magic, to be fooled, for the flim flam. but,
what is the point of that magic, that transubstantiation when
the children are
aborting glitch lives
with guns in their
despair, abracadaver
now you see them, now
(when i was the sea i was gray for you and
when i was the sand i let you walk warm across my shifting back
when i was just the northern forest i was quiet and
for me alone)
i have started taking pictures
a catalogue: how this trick is done
first you pour the love out
then replace with fear
and if i had a gun i'd make
a parable of forgetting
in the closet of my mouth
for you
it's only you who forgets.
//
a word is an annihilator
bang
outwards then
inwards
somewhere else
really? are you really good?
really worth it?
really?
how to redeem: the lost soft love
of a really brown body
from men who really liked
the way my sandy skin
wore against their real whiteness
picture the
white police, couldn't tell me
from the jamaican boy
they called my brother
who came to lend me
the credit of a man
against the menace of one who said
you really are a brown bitch
i'm really going to get you
are you sure you're really
not his sister?
really muslim if arab?
how long i have to live
in this body to be sure enough
for you?
brown girl is a weapon concealed
they think, bidable to danger
but really it's our
trampled hearts
refusing
to die
in the
blast.
///
misdirection depends
(in the photo of me
beside the white girls)
on shadow and light
here's a little
sleight of hand
where breathing fast
is rabbit's heart
finally, a drumroll
play along, sense erases
what we know
pulled from one extreme
and back, a trick of dazzle
(when i was the sea i was gray for you with worry
when i was the sand i let you knead my blood alive
when i was just the northern forest i was blackened by a fire)
other (me)
still looking
help, i'm not just
a woman dancing
afraid of stopping
(when i was the sea you were concealed inside me
when i was the sand you were buried within
when i was the just northern forest you hid inside my leaves)
(i was salt and dirt in which things grew
i was the things that grew in them
i think i'll be again
i am afraid of other things than you)
i carry a weapon
concealed in my heart
that can both melt
and resist you
////
natalie hanna is a queer ottawa lawyer of middle eastern descent working with low income populations, her writing focusses on feminist, political, and personal relational themes. she runs battleaxe press (small press poetry), is the administrative director of the Sawdust Reading Series and serves as newsletter editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.