Prom Queen(s)
By Alicia Elkort And Jennifer Givhan
We didn’t want to be queens Not then—
We wanted not to be hollowed, not to be buried
alive. & when they wrapped us in tarp & threw us to the ocean, those
boys/men who’d shamed us deep [water silence] into brittle bones
where we’d hidden our wounds we wanted
our mothers.
Tahlequah killer whale mama carried her dead calf 17 days
nearly starving [nearly drowning]. We know our mothers would have mothered
us if they hadn’t been wrapped in their own shame tarps which they gave us, like cherished heirlooms.
Late at night when we cleanse the day
a warm shower we women carrying the ghosted girlchildren
into the baptismal font, oceanography of what pasts we’ve dredged,
a whalebone
weighs heavy on our chests
pearlescent horns breaking the jaw’s surface splintering baleen-
[one of us was called blubber & one of us sardine & neither asked to prom]
vitriol still stored in our cells through generations
of girlchilds—
We sing to each other sometimes
our voices are sweet & other times we stab & we claw
In our dreams we are crowned
& we know crowns don’t matter not really
not to the gloryseed of us
so we teach our daughters Dance—
dance your selves to the music you create & the seawaters
rising will never drown you
Let us be seen Let us crown
