Healing Poems 402

I really liked this poem. I am including it here. It was meant to be a part of an art installation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, but it got censored and banned from the installation. This is the only reason that I found the poem and an article about it, at City Pages, a local free weekly newspaper in my area, instead of its rightful place where I would have been able to see it and read it, out there in public, in downtown Minneapolis. The author says, “she envisioned it as an homage to all the strong, revolutionary women who work to make the world a better place.”

A Prayer for Pussies

Grown women know that feeling.
You a little girl under all that skin.
All of that life and holding back.
All of that gray coochie hair
And planted placentas under the tree the kids climb,
when hiding from spankings.
Under piles of unpaid bills and expired lottery tickets.
In your shadow sits that girl within.
Wise and wild.
Quiet and unforgiving.
Indignant and quick.
Clitoris driven.
An emotional wreck with soulful perfection.
Plotting on wildness
You start thinking:
Remember when I was all one hot heat?
One red ferocious flash?
One smooth sweet licorice?
One free flying unknown?

~ Junauda Petrus