Ariel K. Moniz
How The Black Woman Sells Herself
Take this skin—
it caught a lot of eyes, wasps to honey
stung enough that I never forgot
where the pain lived, how I slept
or did not sleep, in the sweet-bodied night.
Take these eyes—
they’ve seen what they can
and could not know if they were
drowning themselves or dying of thirst,
and couldn’t change a thing.
Take this flesh—
a meal for bigotry, a season of undoing,
a lifetime of being mid-city school district
and the Lord’s gospel, they’ll all say
it’s never enough or more than I need.
Take this heart—
it still beats around half-digested dreams,
it looms too large in this chest cavity
of headstones and names like graves,
it’s a call never answered or received.
Take them away—
if I must choose emptiness
let it come, let me be free.
Ariel K. Moniz (she/her) is a queer Black poetess and Hawaii local currently living abroad. She is the winner of the 2016 Droste Poetry Award and a Best of the Net nominee. Her writing has found homes with Blood Bath Literary Zine, Sledgehammer Literary Journal, Black Cat Magazine, and Sunday Mornings at the River Press, among others. She is a devoted reader, womanist, wanderer, witch, melancholy romantic, and a co-founder of The Hyacinth Review.You can find her on her website at kissoftheseventhstar.home.blog, on Twitter @kissthe7thstar, on Instagram @kiss.of.the.seventh.star, or staring out to sea.