Artist Statement:
I write poetry because it is a way for me to come to terms with the many obstacles that I face daily as black woman. Poetry is my therapy. I like to compose in pencil because there is something about the sound of the lead scraping across the page that soothes me. I can only begin a piece when I am arrested by a thought. It’s like, when I set down to write, I am banging this thought out of my head like a washer off kilter. As the thought rattles around in my head, I compose lines under my breath, and it’s only through my writing that I can get it out. I know a piece is done when I am no longer arrested by the thought. After writing, I read my words aloud to hear how they sound sequentially, to ensure that they are the remedy to the thought that has rendered me static. I know that I’m done with my piece when I am no longer arrested. When others hear my work, because it works better when it is read aloud, I would like for them to gain a better understanding as to what I go through daily. I want them to work through, just as I have, the things that have arrested me, and see how I have banged the thoughts out of my head and onto the paper, so that they can hear them bouncing around in theirs.
I have this complex about my complex.ION
Informing the world of my inferiority
Butterscotch peanut butter
Paper bag brown
Caramel candy sprinkled with cinnamon
Complex configuration
Like the blurry array of protons and neutrons racing
Around the nucleus of my atom
Imbalanced inferiority
Charged ION
Like my complexion
Imbalanced
Dark lines mar the smoothness of my cheekbones
Reminiscent of rouge
But on me it’s rough
Like grounds of coffee
Speckling my cheeks
Like dirt – Earthy –
Grounds of filth
Complex.ION
Charged and imbalanced
Never the right color
Too dark to be light
Too light to be dark
Too nappy to be pretty
Too much meat on my bones to be sexy
Charged as ugly
Convicted as fat
Complex complexity
Imbalance of my molecules
Smallest particle of my atom
Unbalanced like my complex.ION
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