Barbarians

by Staceyann Chin

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Barbarians   by Staceyann Chin  your pen did not shy away from queering the brush   stroke of wild, puissant potential in pulsing young bodies the poetry of their skin/pulled drum-tight over muscles their seamless flesh straining for decadent fantastic lessons those already in climax and those still yet to come  you pushed against our containment  argued/excess of restraint lends itself to a softening  of the carapace, atrophy of sinew  you knew how tethers to the limits of institutions  dull the appetite for risk  pull the spirit toward the civilized  (where everything visceral is labeled barbaric)  steer the young toward a prescribed adulthood  waiting for barbarians to provide permission  anticipating these unchained beasts  to finally decree the freedom to eat and fuck  so after/we can pray for forgiveness/because  the barbarian made me do it  (we know ) too often, no barbarian arrives  and we spend our lives weighted down by crowns/  embroidered clothes/ the heavyweight (of appearance) but you  wrote us young/queer/already unfettered  from unjust laws governing whom we choose  to couple/uncouple/copulate/doubly/in triplicate  you prophesied our living (life without the bloodletting of the visceral)  I wonder if you can see  our reality has caught up with how your poems imagined us  the wild young queers of your work   we blossom into ourselves   and guard our days against any pull from our purpose or passion.  the ensuing noise of us is joyful our nights unfold/feral  with our fierce truths you remain an oracle or premonition  a record and a testament our prophecy you remain

Poet, actor, and performing artist, farmer and founder of Menddigap & Kindred on the Rock, Staceyann Chin is the author of the new poetry collection Crossfire: A Litany For Survival, the critically acclaimed memoir The Other Side of Paradise, co-writer and original performer in the Tony Award–winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and author of the one-woman show Hands Afire, Unspeakable Things, Border/Clash, and MotherStruck. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and 60 Minutes, and her poetry has been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post. She proudly identifies as Caribbean, Black, Asian, lesbian, woman, New Yorker, and a Jamaican national.

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