Crossfire

A Litany for Survival

Staceyann Chin

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781642590821
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A collection of poetry by the world-renowned LGBTQ poet and spoken-word artist dealing with themes of identity and love. Crossfire brings together Staceyann Chin's empowering, feminist-LGBTQ-Caribbean, activist-driven poetry for the first time in a single book. According to The New York Times, Chin is "sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking." The Advocate says that her poems, "combine hilarious one-liners with a refusal to conform" and note "Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world." Winner of the American Book Award Features a foreword by Jaqueline Woodson Praise for Crossfire "A remarkable collection from a dynamic and talented writer, whose urgent storytelling and commanding voice feel vital for our times." —Edwidge Danticat "With this astounding new collection of poems, Crossfire, it is evident that Staceyann Chin has come into her raw, sexual, revolutionary, poetic power. These poems are jet fuel from the hot center of the body—from rage, from sorrow, from pure, unmitigated life-force." —Eve Ensler "We've all been waiting for this collection—all of us that know the brilliance, the heartbreaking truth telling, and the magic of Staceyann's cadences. Now all of us who have been lucky enough to have seen her on stage, heard her from the ramparts, can be joined at last by readers in the quiet spaces to properly celebrate this remarkable voice and watch her take her place in American letters." —Walter Mosley

LOVE

WOMEN OF COLOR

Somewhere between midnight

and the hours after

I cough/rasp

exhausted

conversations of race/class/privilege

in a house called

women of color

a spectrum of shades/not white

women of color

collapse me/differentiate me

from white women

collapse us/Latina/brown/Black/Chinese is just one kind of Asian

call it what it is

women of color/women not white/women without the privilege

of health insurance/livable wage/the room to study and preen

without judgment

to walk through any neighborhood/safe

life taps at me

bloody

tonight I bled

and had to scavenge for a product

tagged feminine hygiene/as if my cunt is filthy

for breeding

just a bit of blood

a few days of bleeding

and I can give you a son

a daughter

if I was inclined to lay down for you

I might

in these days I ache for a child

but I do not walk/lie/writhe that route anymore

dyke that I am

I will make my own child

bleed for myself

for a woman of color/maybe

I bleed for all these little girls

under siege because they are not white

some white girls be of color too

not white enough/for being poor

or fat or squat or you ain’t talk the right way to be white

these labels hang heavier than the chains that bind them

around us

and poor white girls

bodies labeled as trash

disposable

of color

not white

tonight this body is drowning in flu/blood/fatigue

frustration

everything makes my body hurt

especially missing you

parts of me scattered all over this country

my poems

half in love with everybody

but my hands

my heart is mostly in love with myself

with this girl of color

this Jamaican girl/not white

night colored/under some lights

I read as not so dark

but put my ass in a park with some real white folks

and I am as Black as they come

till I speak out loud

with more than my hands

then that Queen’s English rolling comfortable

off my tongue

spills my body into owning places

because I am Black

I walk less Asian

invisible Chinese girl

Jamaican tongue

slim/bitch/stitching parts of a broken identity together

in Connecticut

two times in six days

in one week

I have spoken at Yale

Wesleyan/New Haven/Middleton

late night

hotel whispers with old lovers

new friends

I am learning

the sound of breaths not my own

the last time I was here

I held your face

familiar/new/you smelled like the other woman still

I held you

and you kissed me

one last time

and it was enough

that you came

closure they call it closure

women of color rarely get closure

more often/we bleed/untended

invisible

in houses named for us

we mark lines in the sand

pretend these boundaries

protect us

inclusive/the term

collapses me/you/us/into everybody

the features/melding/one giant woman

of color/a woman/not white

pretty woman/I dream about making love to you

all day

I press your words close to my tongue

I dare not say the name of the woman

of color walking Bla...