Small But Heavy - Simone Liggins

Icon that clashes with current image for the masses,

a mass of love and flesh and wisdom and power

clasped between fingers of true devotion

on a chest that beats for shine and shadow.

Silver comfort of your weight

around my neck dangles in the darkness,

grants a blessing of handheld moonlight.

Iconoclast—I C On this Clastic heathen point Your bosom

still cradles the weariest of heads,

Your hips hold the entrance

to the most sacred of temples, and every curve of You

deserves the softest caress and highest respect.

Every non-conforming curve on You not physically seen but

metaphorically felt on me

adds strength to fight

the cold stares at the voluptuous lips that sing

Your praises and mahogany skin that

holds Your pulse and cosmic-cloud hair

that ferries Your prayers adds strength against

disdain of non-believers,

adds strength against the sorrow

of being misunderstood

or acknowledged only in time to be

some peon’s punch line.

Icons transform trauma into treasure,

small but heavy power shaped into a surprise,

curiosity, mystery, dilemma of a hater’s day,

month, lifetime of transformation of flesh, soul seeping through pores

to escape forsaken vessel.

Morph Her into monster, strip Her into stranger,

claim fame in defaming the legacy always originally birthed

to cover your blame.

Cloud the mirror’s gaze until you can’t see,

until you believe there is no shadow of She

within you.

When will you feel the lies of dynamite

that line Her sacred spaces?

How pure must one be considered before

poison deems itself

unworthy of stealing glory?

So much splendor to crave in Your divine glow,

one must know

how to once again stand in Your glimmer.

---

Simone Liggins earned her MFA in Writing at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of Naropa University. The foundation for her love of writing and literature was paved at an early age and blossomed during her teenage years through the kind of tortured freedom that only the ostracism & funk-weirdness of being an African-American Gemini mystic can grant a person. Her various influences include but are not limited to: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, Audre Lorde, Lenore Kandel, Laurell K. Hamilton, Octavia Butler, The Beatles, Lady Gaga, Fiona Apple, and Jimi Hendrix. Her work has been featured in Raven Chronicles, Buddy--A Lit Zine, BEATS Poetry Periodical, Boulder Weekly, Outsider Poetry, SurVision Magazine, Reject Press, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Visitant Magazine, S/tick Magazine, Petrichor Magazine, and work in the forthcoming publication Folklorist with HarperCollins.