Give Now  »

Noon Edition

Joi Is Our Birthroot

Read Transcript
Hide Transcript

Transcript

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

—Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury”

Rose Zinnia was born in Akron, Ohio & is the author of the chapbooks Golden Nothing Forever (Nonbinary), Abracadabrachrysanthemum, Hands, and River (with Ross Gay). Their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, The Tenderness Project, The Ocean State Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. They live with their wolfdog, Kiki, in Bloomington, Indiana where they are an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Indiana University & a book/graphic designer. They co-edit w the trees, poiesis, & the reading series, syzygy.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Rose, what poems have you brought for us today?

Joi Is Our Birthroot (Nonbinary)
i.
i want i want i want i want
to be
the daisy
i want your nose
all up in me
my first words were
unrecognizable
as words
to the dominator
our endlessness [unknown]
goes unrecorded
yet
i go into the wrong
waiting room
they still
call my name
ii.
i want i want i want i want
for u
to be
the daisy
2
now
i want my nose
to brush
yr stamen we are
synoecious cliqcliq
we don't count
each other don't rip
off our arms just to see
if we love
we are always
alreadying
iii.
i know i know i know i know
we are
the ground
we are the limerent
trillium birthroot
wakerobin i say
wake
robin wake
but she is ran over
in the yellow line of the road
3
iv.
in a letter i wrote you
after your sixth or seventh
surgery i said joi
is our birthright
you said that is a privileged
thing
to be able
to say
i wanted to disagree
but u were in pain and it felt
uncouth to insist
v.
when you chop off my head
our roots swell together loamy
headless feeding each other
i receive a text
from my mother a picture of herself
at the honda dealership in cleveland
where she has worked forever
a daisy-patterned covid-mask
covers her face
she is smizing once i surprised her
4
stopping by her work on a punk tour
we were driving from detroit to buffalo
i watched her showing off a mini-van
to an elderly couple she crawled in and
out of the thing like a womb
her hair erupting around her in blooms
our drummer stood beside me
in a white sleeveless punk vest mohawked tattooed and pierced
brand new shiny cars surrounded us
i smiled watching mom be mom
a millenium pink patch on the drummer's jacket said
no gods, no masters i was a patch
of wild phlox pink
effulgent
vi.
joi joi joi joi
i want you
to be
the joi and i'll be
the joi
too
:::::::::::::::::::::
5
we can be
en/joi/ned
:::::::::::::::::::::
vii.
joi is our birthroot
was the nyquil lean
was the line of coke on the drunken
white ass was the duck tape on my tits
was the king cobra chugged
was the slamdance was kissing him
for a bet at the sorority party
[ i liked it ]
was the anthem against
unjoi which was all around
was silence was time untethered
from production was
deserved was the root of
our borning
joi was hidden
inside my
self and in
your self our self
6
is a small
casket we can
open us
we are already perforated
leaking joi
like pheromones
dizzy and triggering
a social response
a collective re/memory of
an unsorrowed earth
we so/ew joi permaculturally
and joi volunteers
day
after
day
dependable unknowable
rising up out of dirt
like
the dead

Center of a daisy

(© Tambacko The Jaguar, flickr)

“I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean--in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight.

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

—Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury”

Rose Zinnia was born in Akron, Ohio & is the author of the chapbooks Golden Nothing Forever (Nonbinary), Abracadabrachrysanthemum, Hands, and River (with Ross Gay). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, The Tenderness Project, The Ocean State Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. They live with their wolfdog, Kiki, in Bloomington, Indiana where ze are an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Indiana University & a book/graphic designer. Ze co-edit w the trees, poiesis, & the reading series, syzygy.

Instagram: @rose__zinnia

Support For Indiana Public Media Comes From

About The Poets Weave