exotic

don’t wanna be your exotic
               some delicate fragile colorful bird
               imprisoned caged
               in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings

don’t wanna be your exotic
               women everywhere are just like me
               some taller darker nicer than me
               but like me but just the same
               women everywhere carry my nose on their faces
               my name on their spirits

don’t wanna
               don’t seduce yourself with
               my otherness my hair
               wasn’t put on top of my head to entice
               you into some mysterious black voodoo
               the beat of my lashes against each other
               ain’t some dark desert beat
               it’s just a blink
               get over it

don’t wanna be your exotic
               your lovin of my beauty ain’t more than
               funky fornication plain pink perversion
               in fact nasty necrophilia
               cause my beauty is dead to you
               I am dead to you

not your
               harem girl geisha doll banana picker
               pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee maker
               town whore belly dancer private dancer
               la malinche venus hottentot laundry girl
               your immaculate vessel emasculating princess

don’t wanna be
                        your erotic

not your exotic

Suheir Hammad


For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you.  Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.

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