We Will Be Her Angels and Your Snakes. {poetry}
My body is a paradox,
Voluptuous and hard,
Fleshy and tight,
She can coo and scream with a single spasm,
Bending and unyielding,
Strong and weak,
Inviting, yet don’t fuck With Me.
I am the world’s vessel, Spirit’s vessel, in service of the Universe
And this is my vessel, not yours
Your desire, need, inconsiderate, rude, grabbing hunger is not what my temple was made for
What She was built for,
Divine cell upon divine cell,
Ivory linked up with ivory,
Bones taking shape to form a being small enough to pass over and large enough to fill up a room —
Making me a witch in my visibility and invincibility —
Making me an adaptive design of divine evolution.
My body comes from brown and white,
Coiling up my lineage in tendrils of hair, fractals of skin, and Star eyes that reflect green rivers in desert valleys,
My body pushes and collapses, pulls and releases, giving a nudge here and a hint there,
She is fierce — so fierce she can go beyond death to give birth
And so tender she can cradle the God-given life of her womb in the aftermath.
My Body is raw power and innocence,
She is Eve before and after the apple,
She has many apples left to bite.
She is Lilith and Isis, Mary Magdalene and Persephone, Hecate, Lakshmi, La Llarona,
She feels waves of sunlight, water, wind, fire, gravity, fullness, emptiness and swirls of unknown,
My body is delicious and savory to those she chooses, and a pungent rejection to those she wretches against — to the Trumps of the world.
She will turn into snake venom and sandpaper when touched without permission,
Her Soul will scar yours with a cry for reconciliation, and your body… when your body touches my body unlovingly, your body will become even more foreign to your own soul.
And when your hands chain my hands, they will become less like the hands of God,
And my angels will infuse me with healing so deep and connection so true that I will not forsake my own body,
Just like we won’t forsake our Earth Body,
Just like the Earth Body has never forsaken us.
We will be Her angels in rape and pillage
We will love Her, pray to Her, infuse Her with our internal sunlight, warm her with the photosynthesis of Love.
We will nurture Her with tears of gratitude and prayers of ancestors and kiss Her with each graze of our feet.
We will coo for Her and rage for Her,
Bend and stand unyielding for Her.
We will embolden and embody the paradox
With Yes, we can! and Hell no, you can’t!
She is my body, because She is my lineage and this flesh belongs to Her.
And so when you claim Her for your greed and relentless consumption,
We stand and we turn into Her angels and your snakes, because you cannot have Her, as long as you don’t know Her and Love Her,
and weep on your knees with gratitude for Her.
She is Ours, and we are Hers. And we will protect All that belongs to Her.
Our Body: the paradox of fierce and tender love.
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Carli Romero is a native New Mexican, who is in love with the state’s blue desert mountains and won’t give up red or green chili for the world. She is a community organizer, invested in cultivating feminine leadership, and transforming education in her state to support whole learners. She is currently working toward her master’s in Educational Leadership at the University of New Mexico, and formerly founded and directed a branch of Shakti Rising in Las Cruces, NM. She is slowly remembering who she is, through visions painted into words. This is her very first creative publication.
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