Content Warning
This poem includes mentions and descriptions of the harassment, sexual assault, rape, and childhood sexual abuse of BIPoC women.
after what yours did to mine
me too
so many times
I can’t count
not even a ballpark
so many times
you wouldn’t believe
and often don’t
so many times
for the longest time
519 years
while your mothers condoned it
while your mothers punished mine for it
my body my choice
nestled in her womb
____I almost killed my mãe
more than once
the doctor called her
decision to keep me
a suicide
a neighbour suggested
“just jump around a bit and
get it over with”
slutwalk
seven years old
____in best friend’s
skimpy clothes
twerking
to the floor
groin
moving towards an
empty beer bottle
her uncles
watching
I can’t recall if that’s all
I don’t want to
hollaback
I prayed for
____my breasts
to swell
beneath my uniform
then they did
and men rubbed
crotches
against my
prepubescent body
on packed buses and
grabbed
my ass
on my way to school
where there’s only yelling
I am grateful
text me when you get home safe
my father didn’t even wait
for my breasts
to
cum
for a while
home was anything but
safe
take back the night
I don’t even know how
____to take back
the day
“why are you anxious?”
I don’t know
“what brought on the panic attack?”
I don’t know
it’s not just the things
I do remember
but the things my
body
remembers
that I don’t
our remains
rarely make it
into
your
news
because
519 years
don’t tell me to smile
but
____don’t tell me
to be angry
for you
or to sympathise
with you
or to empathise
with you
don’t tell me to shout
those two words
with you
when you condone it
when you punish us for it
(were you even
listening to the
Black woman who
cried out them out
for the first time?)
don’t tell me to protest
for you
crowds of
white bodies
safety in numbers
the last thing
I would feel
after what
yours did to mine
Vidya: Tell us about your artistic practice.
Ana Maria: Whenever someone asks me what I do for work I say, “I’m a writer, but I’m also very sick”. The dream is to sit down at my computer and write all day every day. I’ve been trying to set up routines for myself for years, but you can’t really schedule flare ups. At this point in my life my day-to-day is dictated by my chronic illnesses. My health is my full-time job. I’m learning to listen to my body more and to be realistic about its capacity.
Having the means to do this is a privilege I do not take for granted.
Being sick fucking sucks but, I have a beautiful work space at home, with a cat who reminds me to take breaks by demanding cuddles, housemates who look over my writing and make me cups of tea, and friends who come over for work hangs bearing snacks and ciggies.
What prompted this poem?
I originally sat down to write about being frustrated at white people’s reaction to the ‘news’ about climate change. A lot of my friends were coming to me with big feelings about it, which is fair enough because the world is ending and shit’s gonna suck even harder than it does now very, very soon. But there’s a certain privilege in being able to have those feelings.
The world has been ending in so-called ‘third world’ and ‘developing’ countries for decades—if not centuries. Where were the protests then? They weren’t there because white people don’t care about BIPoC. Not even enough to know about what’s going on. Amazônia was burning for ages before it made the news here, then there was this sort of shrug reaction to it. I could go on about this forever…
I started thinking about protests in ‘first world’ countries in general, and then capital F Feminist catch phrases. I have this aversion to them because of white women’s complicity when it comes to violence towards Brown and Black women.
But, honestly, I probably just saw an annoying post or something and rolled with my anger.
This poem tackles a contemporary movement—#MeToo—and complicates how we receive it. Do you find poetry has a role in resisting popular narratives?
The poem wasn’t supposed to be about the #MeToo movement specifically. I kind of don’t like that it ended up being about that. It gives it too much attention, when it’s just as dismissive of BIPoC women’s experience as all those other movements. But sometimes writing takes you elsewhere and you gotta go with it.
I’ve always felt weird about the whole ‘role of art’ shit. So much of it has to do with access. Who will actually get to read this? Even just being able to write already puts me in a position of privilege. I guess, in this case, it’s sort of relevant because ‘after what yours did to mine’ is being published online and is about socio-political movements that got traction through social media platforms.
I also do believe in writing by BIPoC as a means of resistance. I’m going to sound like a total wanker, but I have these photocopies of excerpts from books and songs and so on, taped above my desk to remind me that writing isn’t as feeble a form of ‘activism’ as I lead myself to believe. One of them is from ‘A Litany for Survival’ by Audre Lorde, and it goes:
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
I think the reason I like this is because I read it as a call out to myself like, “Hey bitch, what’s the use of sitting around thinking about how useless making art is? What else are you gonna do? Get the fuck over yourself and write.” I’m too sick to show up to protests—not that there are many actual protests for our rights, but still—so I guess this is my way of challenging mainstream narratives and ideas within my capacity.
I also do believe there’s power in F.U.B.U. I wrote this poem to white women, but for Black and Brown women.
I love how this poem reads as a collage of memories. A voice organises the fragments; engaged in self-discovery and something very interior. Yet this is also declarative and political.
I try to politicise memory as a Person of Colour who has been socialised as (a girl, then) a woman.
Our memories are constantly being questioned. We are always asked to provide proof. This happens every time there is an instance of harassment/abuse/assault/rape. “Where is the evidence?” White women are also asked this question, but people are more willing to believe them.
BIPoC in general have their memories interrogated in every aspect of our lives. So much so that we start doubting ourselves and our own experiences (“Was that person being racist? Or am I overreacting?”). It’s how they keep us quiet. It’s how they’ve kept us quiet for centuries. Well, tried to, because our histories survived through storytelling, which relies on memory itself. This is when I look to that Audre Lorde quote.
And because of this constant demand to provide proof, I’ve developed a belief that my interior self is the only space I can speak from. I politicise memory by trusting my own.
Any thoughts on editing as part of the process?
I’m a slut for getting my work edited. I hated it when I was younger because like, ouch my ego. Until I understood that editing is about making your work better, and who wouldn’t want that? I mean, there are some asshole editors out there, and then just like outright bad ones. There’s nothing worse than being made to question your ability from someone else when, chances are, you already do that to yourself. I found myself in those situations a lot.
Then there’s the BIPoC-writer-white-editor situation, which can be a fucking nightmare. More often than not, white people in the industry have inherently colonial ideas of what writing should look like.
They often miss the point or ask you to do things that feel shitty, like backing up your thoughts with work by people who are supposedly more credible than you. Or asking you to educate more than you want to. Or expecting you to speak on behalf of a group of people.
At one point, I realised that I could actually just say no and go with my gut feeling. There’s been a couple of times when I’ve literally written in the pieces itself, “If you don’t know who or what I’m talking about, look it up honey because it’s 2019, and I don’t have the time or the energy to explain this to you, nor do I want to.” I’m paraphrasing here, but still.
I think Hella was the first Person of Colour to edit my work and man, what a wildly refreshing experience that was. To have someone just trying to improve my actual writing. Writing for Djed is awesome because I’m not the only Brown or Black person in the room for once. I don’t have to follow someone else’s agenda.
Who are some poets you are currently reading or commonly turn to?
Back in Brasil, one of my tios edited and published a newspaper called Jornal do Poeta. Then he’d load the lot into the boot of his car and go to the main city square in the evenings to sell them. When I was eight or nine, I wrote this poem at school about photosynthesis or something, and he published it.
Then he got me to read it at a sarau, which was a really special moment for a shy kid, so I kept writing poetry for a while.
I broke up with poetry when I moved to Australia. It wasn’t a language barrier thing, it was more to do with the poets we were taught about in high school. Boring, dead, white, cis, het dudes that I couldn’t relate to at all.
Poetry and I were only reunited a couple of years ago, when a friend/mentor gave me a copy of Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. The poems in those books broke me open because they gave words to many of my own experiences. Achingly beautiful words. I go back to them over and over again. I also realised that BIPoC women are the true boss bitches of poetry, and so I tend to revisit the royals, Audre Lorde (obvs), Alice Walker, Maya Angelou and so on.
About the author
vidya rajan is a writer, editor and performance-maker. she currently lives in melbourne and is a writer in residence at the malthouse theatre. you can get in touch on twitter.