“My Body Is Not Your Politics” by Hannah Bonner
My body is not your politics.
On the bus, in the Laundromat,
in the classroom, on the stained
mattress, stuck in line for groceries,
pressed together, like petals
in a book, waiting for the sign “walk”
in green, my body is not your politics.
In the dark tunnel of the alleyway
building with the tumult
of a March wind, among the blue
fissures of the call light on the college campus,
between the arms of his embrace
mussing the ink on the page
of the last word in this sentence –
my body – as vast as the silence
stretched between the man and the woman
in the poem – my body – the spring sky, blown
clear of clouds, the small indentation
of last night’s moon, still
present and virtuous – as my body,
my body filled with longing, longing
then relief, still churning, still declarative,
shaking like the Lilacs lining the street,
all blossom, blossom
and bark.
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Hannah Bonner Artist Statement:
I am currently an MA Film Studies student in the Department of Cinematic Arts at
the University of Iowa. My poems have been published in Oyster Boy Review, The
Cellar Door, Asheville Poetry Review, The Freeman, The North Carolina Literary
Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina.
