Naima Woods
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Shadow Black as a dead girl |
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I am beautiful and fat
and in an alley and under a bed and even my own Shadow Black home. You still want me because I'm beddable, even decapitated like this. I know that some of you will use me to soften your guilt, like see I get it. The news is likely to have a woman with a puckered brow and perfect nude lips tell you that I am suspected of selling sex or worse than that. The news will construct me as not ideal. The news will say that I am selling myself as if I ever felt my body was mine, as if my shadow hadn't been bought and sold in all of its previous incarnations. Some of our mothers will use me as a warning, don't be this child, as if any of the babies who will become shadows will know how to be seen as bodied, or as more than just a body’s line. As if some of you will not look at them and say damn, because you think we're still beddable, even without our heads. |
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Shadow Black as the headlines
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Death of Shadow Black
Shadow Black’s arrest, death and the aftermath Decision on where to hold Shadow Black trials, stir emotions Shadow Black riots: City emails show chaos, confusion Shadow Black Cost Estimated $9 Million in Damages Following Shadow Black, Killings in City Soar From Black to Shadow: The consequences of government-sponsored segregation Shadow Black largely peaceful The part of the Shadow Black you haven’t seen Thousands Rally in Shadow Black Shadow Black: a timeline What We Know About the Shadow Black Arrest Violence and Chaos: A visual timeline of Shadow Black Shadow Black death: Autopsy shows homicide, paper says City looks into Shadow Black police custody death Fundraiser to benefit officers charge in Shadow Black trial Law enforcement sources say Shadow Black suffered Shadow Black Arrest Record, Criminal History, Rap Sheet Who was Shadow Black? Who was Shadow Black? Who was Shadow Black? |
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The trouble with craving whiteness
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Your meal is set,
they gave you the girl to eat. Finish all her hipped blonde but your eyes don't read hungry. Your jaw is weak because you aren't taking enough in: vitamin D, iron, good medicine. Just one blue eye and then another, just their sweet gristle and chew. This is a collaboration between seamlined bone, her perfect choke of hair and your hollow mouth. Locks twisted like twine, the gauzy film of scalp, the skull beneath, all yours. How does her meat break down? You feel the fat pare from muscle and between your teeth you can chew all of her sandy skin—a glutton for Beauty. You look in the mirror after-- you are really still raw umber in flat glass, still pinched at the breast, after all that gorging. Your face keeps chestnut, lips still pressed out from your teeth. You search for shinywhite under the brown, check your hairline, your irises. You pat your distended belly, a devotional of the ugly. You know what comes next. You eat the girl. |
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NAIMA WOODS is a writer and educator living and working in the countryside of Southern New Mexico. She is currently pursing her MFA at New Mexico State University. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Tent Residency fellow. Her chapbook, MAKE WITNESS, was published by Zoo Cake Press in 2015. New work can be read in Nepantla, Blackberry: a magazine, Broad, Specter Magazine, Bone Bouquet, Glint Magazine and elsewhere.
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