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2 fat black women are making love

By Saida Agostini

and the joke is right there, ready, shuddering
and alive - rife with promise. there are so many
paths that have been worn out for a quick
easy laugh: tyler perry strutting with a gun and wig,
screaming rotund and loud like a madea would,
martin calling out yo mama on television, or the
meme of a young woman shot underhand
her belly in love with a tight skirt, hands moving
towards an open mouth, look at everything she devours
imagine it: does it make you hungry too?

2 fat black women are making love, on a bed, on the
floor, and they are weeping for joy - they are crying
great folds of flesh flushing and shaking, one cannot
look in the mirror save for thinking of her daddy -
all this ugly and skin together, counts the men who
say they hate her body as they do bitter cops and
dead black boys.

2 fat black women are making love - and they touch
each other like they can hold it. honeyed, profane, bawdy-
like patriots, like their bodies have never been folded
into freezers, screamed at on streets, coaxed or threatened
sweet, like they have names, like we will know
them.
Added: Friday, December 8, 2017  /  Used with permission.
Saida Agostini
Photo by Shanti Flagg.

Saida Agostini is a queer afro-guyanese poet and activist. She is the Chief Operating Officer for FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, a survivor led artist collective dedicated to resisting rape culture. As COO, Saida supports FORCE in sustaining and expanding its capacity to engage in survivor led movement building work. She is also the founding member of the Rooted Collective, a liberatory gathering of Black LGBTQ people to define, dream, and expand on the ways we heal from oppression. A published poet and writer, Saida's work is featured or forthcoming in the Black Ladies Brunch Collective's anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, the Baltimore Sun, pluck!, The Little Patuxent Review, and other publications. Saida has received fellowships in support of her poetry and resistance work from Cave Canem, the Leeway Foundation, and other institutions. She was recently awarded a Ruby grant to support the development of her first full-length collection of poems, uprisings in a state of joy.

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