{"id":129232,"date":"2023-09-02T11:47:20","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T15:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=129232"},"modified":"2023-09-02T11:48:57","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T15:48:57","slug":"three-giraffe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/three-giraffe\/","title":{"rendered":"Three: Giraffe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giraffe<\/strong>
\nthree
\n(TW for racism, homophobia)<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

We are the stuff that dreams are made of.
\nOr, at least that\u2019s what the dead man told us, but it was probably his lover doing the writing anyway, because everyone knows that queer love is a giraffe\u2019s neck
\nBy which, I mean
\nThey tell us a horse with a horn is a magical fantasy but that spotted golden cow neck towers towards the sky so which creature is harder to believe in?
\nThat queer love has marked every stage of history, always?
\nYet somehow we\u2019re unicorns. Impossible dreams that never existed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not mythology. It\u2019s erasure.<\/p>\n

And Tulsa said his name was Dusk, but we all knew he tasted like sunlight
\nAnd little brown boys loving one another is exactly what sunlight tastes like.
\nIt spreads easy across the coming dawn like promise. Like tomorrow.
\nWhat I mean to say, is that loving yourselves is an act of defiance.
\nBut you can\u2019t bottle sunshine and sell it to Hollywood, so they beat the queer out of brown hides instead
\nTanning skins
\nHanging fresh to dry despite the tears of their mothers.<\/p>\n

They lied about Emmet, anyway. It wouldn\u2019t have mattered if he were queer. He\u2019d still be just as dead.<\/p>\n

But Baby, she sees the sunlight in his swollen face and calls it beautiful
\nEven in death
\nBecause no noose ever swung open mouthed like a song for tomorrow. They only speak one language. Only sing the low notes of low men in their yellow coats
\nWith their yellow teeth
\nAnd their yellow claws piercing the false flesh of their fingertips
\nThey filthy the color because they can\u2019t golden their feathers.
\nThere\u2019s no flight for monsters. The sky is a freedom torn wide for joy.<\/p>\n

The roots are birthing blackness but the cotton tops were always white
\nSay woven families scattered to seed
\nSay don\u2019t say gay and teach
\nSay pinch the tail and suck the head
\nThere is only one right way, and it\u2019s what they decide.
\nOurs is only to abide. They are sunlight, after all.
\nThe sky was made for sunlight.<\/p>\n

And if I could touch the braided coils, would they be worn with time? Would I see the age and mark the history as violence or as progress? Would the books still print their yellow bellies loud across the pages of our children\u2019s desks, speaking to the skills on enslavement? I hear the cotton growing. It groans from the earth we traded for money. It poisoned our waters and the rice is thick with arsenic. The bodies are always dying. Always burning.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happens when you murder a sunlit child.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giraffe three (TW for racism, homophobia) We are the stuff that dreams are made of. Or, at least that\u2019s what the dead man told us, but it was probably his lover doing the writing anyway, because everyone knows that queer love is a giraffe\u2019s neck…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3239,"featured_media":129222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129232"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129270,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129232\/revisions\/129270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}