Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha – Poetry
every time I see you I think
what the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t thinking.
I was heart
broken. I was chest
cracked like axe. I was thinking
what the hell &
what’s the worst thing
that could happen
& what the fuck
the most dangerous questions
for any mean
broken-hipped
brown femme
who survived
whose pussy lips lift hopeful
twitch like touch me not petals
yearn for something worthy
of her open
white bois with weslayan degrees
and eager butts and nonprofit movementjobs you wanted
are just like whole foods take out:
when you are too tired
to cook your own food
you can pay too much
for a tasteless version of your culture
that promises it won’t kill you.
afterwards, a greasy crunched compostable box
and debit charge so much more expensive
than you budgeted for.
a smear of your petals on the windshield
won’t be the fought for flavor
blooming on your tongue
your particular vulnerable longed for
homefood.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled Sri Lankan cis femme writer, performer, organizer and badass visionary healer. The author of the Lambda Award winning Love Cake and Consensual Genocide and co-editor ofThe Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, her work has appeared in the anthologies Dear Sister, Letters Lived, Undoing Border Imperialism, Stay Solid, Persistence: Still Butch and Femme, Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don’t Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Femme and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World.
As Us 