#notvanishing

welcome to the working poor, bb!!

Ughhhhhhhh. I've been after them for more money since classes started.

to the bone place where blood is made 

and every moon's a mother

your hands & tongue

in me a brush fire I wake up wanting you

Shrill cry of a dawn bird between my legs

memories of your sweet brown breasts

brushing my thighs

You go 

where no one

has gone before until I'm weeping laughing

as you murmur in my wet ear 

your husky voice like hot blood   I love you

My hair in your mouth burns for you

your lips nibble my lips my breasts

think they can't live without you

Between moments of you I'm a bird

who flies out of vision

you come

like the first bird breaking open the night with dawn

stars bursting into day sucking you I'm made

a moon sweet with light

Crying in that bone & blood place where you make me

Yours.

-----------------------

It is true. As a young lesbian, I was a poetry hound. Always seeking out poetry that could best convey my love, my lust, my longing, my pain and my nature. Often times, I came across this very homogenized lesbian poetry, that would make me laugh out loud. And then from time to time I would come across something that took my breath away, and made me weep, because I saw myself in it: my pain, my lust, my struggle, my nature and my skin. I took one of my first lovers. Her name was DJ. She was beautiful, butch, soft and first. She gave me a copy of "In her I am," by Chrystos, a Lakota Femme. DJ welcomed my fist as if it was meant to be housed in her deep cunt. She showed me how to fuck her, unapologetic of my desire to be inside her. She challenged my ideas of what it meant for me to be femme, and no one loved the smell of my cunt as much as she did. I wish I have carried around this book for the better part of 15 years, through many loves, a lot of heartbreaks, a lot of loss, a lot of trying to find home and a whole lot of love. I have also learned to submit.

I realize there are queers who don't know about Chrystos, but I think we should all know of her. She has dedicated her life to activism, while living on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. She is a First Nations womyn, who writes beautifully. She is my elder, and she will not vanish.

  Other books by her:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=chrystos&sprefix=chrys%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Achrystos

Chrystos at Creating Change 2011: