I have become increasingly addicted to poetry particularly where it is concerned with notions of identity, the politics of location and universal struggle. HERE Joyoti Grech answers that familiar and so loaded question “Where are you from“ and other questions which constrict one’s being and becoming more than…..
In Answer to some questions
In answer to some qeustions that miss the point
or
yes but where are you from?
What I dont have
is a land
is a lover
is a language
to say, is mine
What I dont have
are ropes
of romance
of nationalism
of words to tie me down/in smug belonging
to stop me knowing
what more there is
What I dont have
is pencil lines
drawn around my/self
by pale people
who know nothing / of my terrain
What I dont have
are someone else’s borderlines
I rub them out with my desire
with action
and a need to know
I am never satisfied
I flood their borders
with the sea of my sisters names
and my brothers
whose lives keep their blood
red line mine.
Joyoti Grench
Published in Black Women Writing & Identity – Carole Boyce Davies, 2005
