her tin skin
i want her tin skin. i want
her militant barbie breast,
resistant, cupped, no, cocked
in the V of her elbow. i want
my curves mountainous
and locked. i want her
arabesque eyes, i want her
tar markings, her curlicues,
i want her tin skin. she
is a tree, her hair a forest
of strength. i want to be
adorned with bottles. i
want my brownness
to cover all but the silver
edges of my tin skin. my
sculptor should have made
me like her round-bellied
maker hewed her: with chain-
saw in hand, roughly. cut
away from me everything
but the semblance of tender.
let nothing but my flexed
foot, toeing childhood, tell
the night-eyed, who know
how to look, what lies within.
—after alison saar’s “compton nocturne”
Copyright Credit: Evie Shockley, “her tin skin” from the new black. Copyright © 2011 by Evie Shockley. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: the new black (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)