Body of Render

Felicia Zamora

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781555976903, 9781571315120
• eBook ISBN: 9781597098106
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Body of Render explores the internal and external impacts on our humanity when political, national, and societal decisions strip away our basic human rights. What does it mean to be an underrepresented individual in a country where the most powerful seat in the land unashamedly perpetuates racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and classist behaviors? The voices document a journey before and after the last presidential election. These poems cry out for reconsideration of our broken systems to find common and safe ground rooted in equitable treatment of each other as human beings. How do we exude love when being a person of color or underrepresented person in this country means the dominate white-male-able-bodied-heterosexual narrative continues to threaten our voices? This collection carves at the physical, the political, the intimate, and the structural with poems that simultaneously create and encourage voice to seek a path toward collective mending.

AT THE HAND OF OTHER

At the hand of other

& of desire; how we thirst below flesh, below cortex, below pelvis; the minute ticks we hardly keep at bay; how we often inside out; how we bells struck & our music resides first in body, then in {mindful this gap}; we bounce back to ourselves, to lick our own lips & feel the weight of our own motion & emotion: jellyfish in change of water’s influence; to be at the hand of other; say this too, desire; how afferent, we, always in lead toward; how we all nerves in gather, message message & our pupils dilate us; how we all wet & longing, cell to cell.

In our bundle

When we think of sticks, do we think tree; oh bramble of me; what part of us, scatters wind, becomes home to something other; how your skinny bones in drape, mulberry limbs; oh slats of light, ribs of; & dusk always resides in chest, in fissures between lobes where all of us lie temporal & disoriented, oh this piece of; suture back; yes a question, no no an answer; how skeletal the bark of us, word & flesh; I left me for you propped against the girth of trunk; how we shed ourselves over & over: snake bundled in snake skin; once, yes, once we were one.

In fall or other shitty metaphors for depression

When silence does not exist & the mind drapes in whispers; a creeping creep; clock ticks etch the eardrum; fingers to throat; how lightening in passage; how all this electrification in your chest; cave for sear, in remembrance live, live, live; ribs swell, just before; a growing presence of plead, o-h g-o-d, syllables strung in temporal lobe; how a world smells of Marlboros & whiskey & you adverse to your own life, crawl back into your jaw; & you lug your torso around on sore hips, oh wait of frost to blanket this dead of fall.

In the light of

Light exists, then, this November light; how we yellow in the dried, in the plummet; sun, gorgeous sore, tests the pupil in constrict, lips in part more more; say alive & feel it—inside all these organs & cells, how they animate together; how we all in animation together; in tether to the ball of gas in gush 92.96 million miles from; & earth, say it, earth, binds us to other; say molecule; say seven billion billion billion; yes, that’s you: body of minuscule bodies; our matter in constant question, bends in shadow.

Back to quiet

& the blades of grass prepare for dormant; think think in stillness, under winter’s palm in swift approach; desire now this return to dust, this work beyond autumnal brain, autumnal body; how we plot our birth & death among cycles of seasons, ignoring, at times, dusks & dawns in hurry, in hurry; oh the yawn of us; how we tire of tunnels, pupil’s capture of the backs of our own hands; all these keyboard strokes; how we ache in our hippocampi; we sift memory in gather, in gentle care, to mind the incessant pull back to elements, back to quiet.

In the name of freedom (an election thought)

What meaning lost in the name of; think crusades; what you know of good intentions; when last you brother; when last you sister; how social media invents: a therapy gap to consider less & speak more; when did we become definitive statements behind cyber cyber-degradations; say this lack of, oh empathy oh; how we stay at wrist-lengths from society, our keyboard cage; such less we we, more my my; how disconnection: a sickness we cure with more sickness, more declarations behind closed minds; elections reveal one of our faces—we a nation of; marvelous colors, creeds, identities, ideas; how we in terrifying action to each other; & how the first woman, say president, say qualified, say what lovely reality, must be candidate to: say sexual predator, say a joke’s sad fruition; what cruel reality this historical privilege, this thumb pressed upon you & you &; how some close their eyes; how you will weep, in one way or another.

& in burn you also

The cattails golden in the afternoon’s low sun; smell of dried sap releases in each crunch under step; here the trees & ground prepare; say, smoke of what burns; how we all carry on wind in our delicate, our smallness; one must completely disintegrate before; think phoenix; & you so close to combustion—you long for anything resembling flame; this dirt path, travelers before you; how we bind to each precipice before us; your hand in lover’s hand; how in one moment: a guide, how other: lost, so lost & smoke of the burning fills you.

Election Night

Tonight electoral electoral electoral; dichotomy of blue & red; how my Latina body, my pinkish vagina, my nipples protrude, just so; how blue my lips after blow job; how blue my veins in loyal pump to heart; how nasty woman me; how proud; & the nation teeters on a razor, ready to bleed—red red red my pupils in stun—for a president who believes me a disgusting animal; how numbers tally &...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Contents
• At the hand of other
• Raw deliberation of circumstances
• No apologies to America anymore
• Infinite design of a mouth, open
• About the Author