Vantage Points From Venus

Inspired by the Sun's passage through Cancer, I was digging through some old email recently, and came across a piece I wrote some years ago (six to be exact) when I was wearing my poet hat. I remember writing this after dealing with a string of less than stellar relationships with men who weren't right for me. When I performed/read this piece in front of audiences, I always prefaced the poem with a joke about playing the "angry woman" so as to make it more palatable to the men that may have been in the audience. Looking back, I believe that there was a part of me that was angry but I also think that I was using that anger to draw a boundary of sorts. This was the beginning of a cathartic purge, of me taking a stand for myself and other women that also allowed themselves to be sucked into relationships--however fleeting--with men who devalued us. Today, I freely admit that this poem is angry. It's gritty, it's caustic but sometimes anger is the very thing you need to save yourself.

Vantage Points from Venus

Homeboy, this is a notice:
This is a notice to inform you that from now on, from this point forward
This moist, soft fold of flesh, between my thighs
Brown like soil, seeped in rose water—
With gossamer rings that circle the sun like Jupiter—
Will in fact, no longer be your nomadic dumping ground. 

My man, this is a notice
This is a notice to apprise you that at this very point in time
My pussy will no longer be considered as some random gaping hole, empty crevice, curbside 
Gutter
For you to fill
With sour spit
And dirty fuck fingers
That stick in me, stuck sticky
With bad blood birthed
Between you and the women who came before me 

My dude, this is a notice
This is a notice to enlighten you that as of today and every day immediately after
My vagina will no longer be your battleground
For you to stage your one man revolutions
Against your army of spastic demons
Camped on bridges spanning matriarchal meltdowns
And the fantastical failures of ill-equipped dads turned infant in the eyes of gods 

Oh boy. This is a notice.
This is a notice to advise you and your likeminded gentry
That your penis will no longer be a battering ram
It will no longer be used to break down my uterine walls
In an effort to break me or my momentum
In breaking up your preconceived notions about who or what you mistake me to be 

And mister believe me when I tell you about me—
This girl, woman, daughter, sister, mother, lover
Anti-Hottentot, uber Venus
She who sits atop the world
Balancing the weight of the universe
Under the pressure of her womb
Holding whole galaxies between forefinger and thumb
She who steadies whole oceans between bellies and hips 
She, me, I,
I, me, she
has come to put you on blast 
That until further notice
My black ass will no longer take your shit. 

Me in 2009.