Poetry is my obligation to myself and my gift to others–but I will not be apologetic. I cannot be apologetic. Too often, I’m urged not to share what I have written about (what is taboo or controversial). It has always felt safer to be silent than improper, but I am exhausted by the weight of this control. There is something academic in profanity, something lovely in the ugly, and something healing in recounting what hurts the most. And so, I cannot exist in the pleasant because when I feel joy, I feel it in spite of suffering. And when I write of affection, I do so in spite of hate. And when I destroy myself, my life, and the world within my stanzas, it is so they can be rebuilt. Poetry is a commitment to observe that which is responsible for its own undoing and holds it accountable. Poetry is uncorrupted by what you think of it.
My poems are resistance –if not in content, in the sense that they are written by a girl opposed to being quiet. If my poetry does nothing of value at all for the masses, it will keep a bit of me alive when I am no longer here. If my words are written, I will have fulfilled a duty to myself.
I grew up believing that art in every form was a craft that took meticulous planning—hours labored over a perfect expressive execution and either an inherent possession of supreme artistic talent or rigorous education. Poetry is not that (or at least it doesn’t have to be). If I were made to plead my case by these standards, however, my meticulous planning happens in the words left unsaid or the words that were said but remain unheard. My hours of labor are present in sleepless nights, dying romances, Ancestry.com, and sexually inappropriate workplaces. My “inherent talent” is likely documented somewhere in a psychiatric evaluation. I am educated by struggle, by unimaginable adoration, by constant evolution, and unendingly by the brilliance and violence of others. So, I will never prioritize what can be easily swallowed over what is honest. I am dangerous in that way. Poetry is my justice, but not my revenge.
I reject that any one of us is free from blame, from disorder, from having the capacity for introspection; poetry does too. Discord and harmony coexist here. A tradition of quiet suffering can be reversed here. Children who grew up too quickly can regain playtime here. Populations that are wiped from the Earth like a centipede carcass from a shoe have a memorial here. The letters you never sent are finally stamped, transported, and received here. The bitten tongue is given another chance to profess love here. The truths that died long ago are reanimated here. Wounds scab over and mutate into knowledge here.
Those who mistook me as insignificant are forced to reckon with my enormity through poetry. This enormity cannot be bound by fear of critique, nor politeness. I will be many things in this life, but never a fraud. I will be many things, but I will remain an unapologetic poet.