By Taté Walker
PROMPT—Privilege ...
i am buried
so deep
and dark
in your glorious universe
the obsidian space around
everything
so rich with unexplored life
my joy stretches like
summertime shadows
felt in your vivid
blacks and browns
shades of warmth
and strength
protection against the bright white
that exposes all our faults and fears
there’s a lie in light
burning us away from one another
turning our underground ceremony
to ash
tricking us into believing that dirt
with its endless possibilities for growth
is unclean
its glare tries to colonize
our hopes with dread and disdain for
everything
the dark offers
as if the expansive unknown
isn’t always a
mysteriously murky adventure
where we find ourselves
rooted together
ready to bloom
two spirits
rising together
with winter’s new moon
into the darkest
everything
Taté Walker (they/them) is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. They are an award-winning Two Spirit storyteller for outlets like The Nation, Pipe Wrench, Apartment Therapy, Subaru Drive, Everyday Feminism, Native Peoples, Indian Country Today, and ANMLY. They are also featured in several anthologies: FIERCE: Essays by and about Dauntless Women, South Dakota in Poems, W.W. Norton's Everyone's an Author, and The Languages of Our Love: An Indigenous Love and Sex Anthology (forthcoming Summer 2022). Their first full-length poetry book, The Trickster Riots, was published June 1, 2022, by Abalone Mountain Press. Taté uses their 15+ years of experience working for daily newspapers, social justice organizations, and tribal education systems to organize students and professionals around issues of critical cultural competency, anti-racism/anti-bias, and inclusive community building.
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