By Raina J. León
protest
no Peppa, no potty she says
while she hardens her eyes
and drops her mouth’s
softness to stone grimace
she will not go though she has to
no Peppa, no potty
when i remind that she can watch
as i do her hair
our morning ritual and show her
new blue and polka dot
bows for preening
no Peppa, no potty
i offer her this lesson
in all ways i support and celebrate
her ability to choose her own body’s work
in all ways i will buoy her protest
but protest, not against what is good for her,
her own independence
what to hold and what to release
far away from us
there are children and families
without electricity, without food, without water
babies who have lost their mothers
their fathers and even parts of themselves
should i tell her about the girl in the bombed out car
her family dead around her
how she called for help
يساعد
עֶזרָה
and help
and all that she received was her body’s retrieval
when the bullets stopped gutting metal
not that
how to cut
the wisps of my daughter’s hair to synaptic bridges
with this
atrocity and devastation and genocide
death to friends we haven’t as yet met
we must protest
protest for the good of people
for what is right
not against our own self interest
her face softened
she turned her back
her shoulders still rigid and feet heavy
she climbed the toilet
and sat her fists at her chin
and waited to let go
at the school where few can say my children’s names correctly
my son free wanders the school grounds
as we go to pick up his sister
his world the mulch, the wobbly stones,
the basketball balls pounding their loosed rhythms
still winter but my body swelters
in its bulbous sway and saunter
coat left behind, i carry a thin-skinned boulder
that puckers from internal kicks
i guide our way through the draped mouths
wide caves in child faces
there are no black children in this scene
no one whose voice lilts like ours between languages
a wonder that there is one black teacher outside
she calls, i’ve been wanting to see you
how are you? as if we are old friends
but of course we are
has she, too, been spectacle in being?
in a chocolate city, i wonder
how many of these children have never seen
never imagined a black woman
thickly dancing a new cosmos to terra firma
and i think
i have failed my children
Raina J. León, PhD, is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. The Acentos Review has published over 1000 Latinx voices in over 15 years. She recently retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She currently supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA program of the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.