Post-Racial

After Sandra Cisneros

You bring out the long haul of exile in me
blackballed bellows of “sand nigger, spic, paki”
left to envelop the embargo;
the denomination of defile

in me

The double barrel of blaspheme claw-marking
these cross-hairs penciled between my brows
mouth shut like polished leather on
a gideon’s bible
The spittle of scripture now fermenting
its bile in me

Slaver. Oppressor. Other.

The barbed wire of electrocuted nights in me
These iron-fisted, shattered jaw fights in me
& know, – know I am not just a silhouette or
a statistic or scarehead — No!

This skull filled with tequila and tears in me
That jaguar’s clan; a toothed vernacular of
antiquity now inches slow spears, in me

knees skinned in prostrations to the firing
squad;— the hunted child of fear, in me

This mute cleansing, high-bred, blue-rimmed

Brother, you bring out the cutthroat
communist in me

The wheelbarrow tottering into a draught in me
The hammer rusted to the sun-bled of these wars
covertly fought in me

You bring out teenaged girls gang-raped by a police state
their torn vaginas, slit wrists in me

You bring out the tortured death of a pacifist in me

This is me. This is

You.

The same. Always. The same.

By Scherezade Siobhan

Biography:

Scherezade Siobhan is an Indo-Roma Spanish psychologist and writer. Her work has been published and/or is forthcoming in tnYPress, Black and Blue Writing, Bluestem, The Nervous Breakdown, Cordite Poetry Review, Words Dance, Electric Cereal, Winter Tangerine Review and others. Her first poetry collection “Bone Tongue” was released by Thought Catalog in 2015. She can be found at www.viperslang.tumblr.com/