Unruly
Hushed whispers in an undisclosed room
Take it out of the girl
a child, boyish in nature their smallness magnified.
Outcasted—the soft bodied animal you are
determined unruly animalia,
what survives inflation & inertia?
The body is a set of complex feedback systems
nothing is as it appears
the coexistence of a beard & breasts
evidence of the body’s willfully defiant nature
The body’s resilience amid the promise of perish:
somehow the child survives their own hand
the day’s weary edge inverted toward grace
A child, boyish in their nature & barrel shaped
survives sedimented against the residue
of dunes, soil, leaf litter, & the bodies of a lesser
What couldn’t be excised
your boyish nature
your untamed phylum, your small heart pulsing loud
notes against the night.
Copyright © 2020 by Jari Bradley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 8, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I was inspired by the life cycle of Tardigrades, a phylum of water dwelling micro animals. They are incredibly resilient, being able to withstand radiation, starvation, dehydration, starvation, etc. The unruly nature of its existence reminds me of the black queer child cultivated in a society that seeks to destroy such a child. Writing through abjection has provided another means of staging the resilience of my own body growing up in San Francisco, and the seemingly smallness of such a life.”
—Jari Bradley
Jari Bradley
Jari Bradley is a Black genderqueer poet and scholar. Originally from San Francisco, they are a PhD candidate at the University of Houston.