this body
needs metaphors
to love itself
my ego feeds off allegorical conditioning
so that the skin I wear
does not feel
like a bad fit, stretched
uncomfortably across my skeleton
like the ones in my back closet
which whisper similes
and similar inspiration
into my shelves at midnight
I need to call my stretch marks
tiger pelt
so that living with them
doesn’t feel all that difficult anymore
I need to call my hands curious
so that I don’t feel filthy
when I search your body
in the hope that verses will fall out
like spare change
from an old pair of jeans
(I need to call my vagina
the ocean just so that I may be sure
of the power it holds within its folds
each time someone tells me
to grow a pair )
I need to call these feet wanderers
so that their searching gaze
doesn’t haunt those
who cannot fathom walking away
from something you love
when it starts to hurt you
I forget when I started to care
about lending my body as a vehicle
to the project of morality
or the happiness of others
the blood that flows through my veins
is B+ and it stands for body positive
I will not cower
behind imagined normatives
or narratives which exploit this body
for the sake of maintaining a standard
I am not the whim of a regulator and
I am not the only one
we are an army of women,
liberated females
ready to reclaim our own bodies,
ready to question your opinions.
we are waiting for the day
we get to take from those in power
our rights
which we will not hesitate then
to ask for.
our voices are political
our bodies are weapons
and our movement will crash
against the wall of patriarchy in waves
the other day
someone asked me
whether a boy talking at length
about his penis in a poem
would make him vulgar
and I tell them
that anything can be made tasteful
if you know what I mean
and we both laugh, because humor
is another way to make your body
more comfortable with itself,
but inside me, inside this flesh-cage
which needs analogies to love itself
I wonder
what it is about our bodies
that makes conversations about
them vulgar anyway
Priyanka likes to think of herself as a poet who is trying to figure out how to be human. She enjoys feminist theory, literary criticism, and good coffee.
