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eBook - ePub
Tonguebreaker
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
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- 96 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Tonguebreaker
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
The latest from the Lambda Literary Award-winning poet, about the way we survive, revolt, and thrive in these desperate times.
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Information
1. femme futures
Femme futures
Where does the future live in your body?
Touch it
1.
Sri Lankan radical women never come alone.
We have a tradition of coming in groups of three or four, minimum.
The Thiranagama sisters are the most famous and beloved,
but in the â20s my appamma and great-aunties were the Wild Alvis Girls.
Then thereâs your sister, your cousin, your great-aunties
everyone infamous and unknown.
We come in packs we argue
we sneak each other out of the house
we have passionate agreements and disagreements
we love each other very much but canât stand to be in the same room or continent for years.
We do things like, oh, start the first rape crisis center in Jaffna in a war zone
in someoneâs living room with no funding.
When war forces our hands,
we all move to Australia or London or Thunder Bay together
or, if the border does not love us, we are what keeps Skype in business.
When one or more of us is murdered
by the state or a husband
we survive
whether we want to or not.
I am an only child
I may not have been born into siblinghood
but I went out and found mine
Made mine.
We come in packs
even when we are alone
Because sometimes the only ancestral sisterlove waiting for you
is people in books, dreams
aunties you made up
people waiting for you in the clouds ten years in the future
and when you get there
you make your pack
and you send that love
back.
2.
When the newly disabled come
they come bearing terror and desperate. Everyone else has left them
to drown on the Titanic. They donât know that there is anyone
but the abled. They come asking for knowledge
that is common to me as breath, and exotic to them as, well,
being disabled and not hating yourself.
They ask about steroids and sleep. About asking for help.
About how they will ever possibly convince their friends and family
they are not lazy and useless.
I am generousâwe crips always are.
They were me.
They donât know if they can call themselves that,
they would never use that word, but they see me calling myself that,
i.e., disabled, and the lens is blurring, maybe there is another world
they have never seen
where crips limp slowly, laugh, have shitty and good days
recalibrate the world to our bodies instead of sprinting trying to keep up.
Make everyone slow down to keep pace with us.
Sometimes, when Iâm about to email the resource list,
the interpreter phone numbers, the hot chronic pain tips, the best place to rent a ramp,
my top five favorite medical cannabis strains, my extra dermal lidocaine
patchâitâs about to expire, but donât worry, itâs still goodâI want to slip in a P.S. that says,
remember back when I was a crip
and you werenât, how I had a flare and had to cancel our day trip
and when I told you, you looked confused
and all you knew how to say was, Boooooooooo!
as I was lying on the ground trying to breathe?
Do you even remember that?
Do your friends say that to you now?
Do you want to come join us, on the other side?
Is there a free future in this femme of color disabled body?
3.
When I hear my femme say, When Iâm old and riding a motorcycle with white hair down my back.
When I hear my femme say, When Iâm old and sex work paid off my house and my retirement.
When I hear my femme/myself say, When I get dementia and I am held with respect when I am between all worlds.
When I see my femme packing it all in, because crip years are like dog years and you never know when theyâre going to shoot Old Yeller.
When I hear my femme say, when I quit my teaching gig and never have to deal with white male academic nonsense again.
When I hear us plan the wheelchair accessible femme of color trailer park,
the land we already have a plan to pay the taxes on
See the money in the bank and the ways we grip our thighs back to ourselves
When I hear us dream our futures,
believe we will make it to one,
We will make one.
The future lives in our bodies
Touch it.
Crip fairy godmother
Hi, baby crip
I know, you feel like a ton of bricks just hit you. They did.
But Iâm your crip fairy godmother
and Iâm here to tell you whatâs going to happen.
I hate to say it, but itâs a cheat sheet called, they mostly donât care about us
Because this is exactly whatâs going to happen:
Your able-bodied friends will stop calling.
Itâs going to be real cute for a minute,
but then there will be other things to look at on Instagram
Theyâre going to wish you a âspeedy recoveryâ
and they will be so surprised when there is neither
speed or a recovery.
They will say, âoh, youâre not disabled, sweetie, donât call yourself that.â
They will laugh uncomfortably when you state simple facts about your body
They will tell you to hurry up
every way they can
with every deep sigh, every itâs fine,
every time theyâll walk ahead of you so fast
they donât even notice youâre gone.
There will be expectations of gratitude!
There will be, âHope you feel better soon!â
Most of all thereâs this:
they will forget you
You have to know this, they will forget you,
over and over again.
They will fo...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Thanks and acknowledgments
- Preface: the epistemology of breaking/how you make a book
- 1. femme futures
- 2. sacrum
- 3. bedlife
- 4. rust will cut you
- 5. ritual prayers: performance texts from mangos with chili
- 6. cripstory
Citation styles for Tonguebreaker
APA 6 Citation
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2019). Tonguebreaker ([edition unavailable]). Arsenal Pulp Press. Retrieved from https://www.perlego.com/book/3047028/tonguebreaker-pdf (Original work published 2019)
Chicago Citation
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. (2019) 2019. Tonguebreaker. [Edition unavailable]. Arsenal Pulp Press. https://www.perlego.com/book/3047028/tonguebreaker-pdf.
Harvard Citation
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2019) Tonguebreaker. [edition unavailable]. Arsenal Pulp Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3047028/tonguebreaker-pdf (Accessed: 15 October 2022).
MLA 7 Citation
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Tonguebreaker. [edition unavailable]. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019. Web. 15 Oct. 2022.