Natalie Diaz Famous Quotes
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They Don't Love You Like I Love You"
My mother said this to me
long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics
from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
and what my mother meant by
Don't stray was that she knew
all about it - the way it feels to need
someone to love you, someone
not your kind, someone white,
some one some many who live
because so many of mine
have not, and further, live on top of
those of ours who don't.
I'll say, say, say,
I'll say, say, say,
What is the United States if not a clot
of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?
If not the place we once were
in the millions? America is Maps -
Maps are ghosts: white and
layered with people and places I see through.
My mother has always known best,
knew that I'd been begging for them,
to lay my face against their white
laps, to be held in something more
than the loud light of their projectors
of themselves they flicker - sepia
or blue - all over my body.
All this time,
I thought my mother said, Wait,
as in, Give them a little more time
to know your worth,
when really, she said, Weight,
meaning heft, preparing me
for the yoke of myself,
the beast of my country's burdens,
which is less worse than
my country's plow. Yes,
when my mother said,
They don't love you like I love y
Tonight I am riddled by this thick skull
this white bowling ball zipped in the sad-sack carrying case of my face
Instead of grace, we rattle forks in our empty bowls.
Poor Antigone. Bury the horses, instead, I tell her.
What will we eat then? she weeps, not knowing weeping isn't what it used to be, not here.
Poor, poor Antigone.
We aren't here to eat, we are being eaten.
Come, pretty girl. Let us devour our lives.