(no subject)

I'm a little afraid to post this because

A) I feel like I'm crap at poetry, and this (Like the sonnet, which i may one day edit for this reason) is not even an hour old.
B) While the choice to *keep* the word girl was as deliberate as was the choice to drop the word "Oriental" (Because girl has a specific and valid meaning) it might be seen as problematic in itself.
C) Shweta_Naryan, as usual, started the theme (She also caused the sonnet that I did a while back, unwitting), and did a much better job in much less space.
(Read her lovely poem Here. ETA: oops. I failed to notice, in spite of her saying so explicitly, that she's locked it temporarily to give Star*line the chance to respond publicly to a complaint related to the poem she's responding to. I'll make sure to mention it and re-link if she opens it to the public. Because it's so much better than mine.)
D) Not sure if all the formatting will survive lj. (ETA: Yup. All the spacing within the lines went away. Oh, well.)

An Asian girl dances:

In hip-hop clubs
Laughing
Pony-tailed, among friends
Raises her hands in the air.
Like the music tells them all to do.

In the India School of Dance
On St. Mary's Road.
Urged by her mother when she was four,
Still struggling with the perfect precise shapes
her fingers will someday make.

All alone,
Hiding in the basement,
because she loves to wheel and twirl
But her big brother said she looks dumb.
So she hides
For now.
Maybe when she's six
She'll risk the living room again.

At the Ballet
For the first time
A minor part,
Toes taped,
Costumed to look like all the others
Hair bunned
Body aching
Forgetting the audience
Until the applause and the curtseys.
(In a few years,
when she thinks she'll feel like a grown woman,
a real member of the Ballet
Good Enough
Maybe she'll get the lead?)

At a multicultural festival
In the Korean Youth Troupe
Displaying months of effort for strangers
A display indeed,
But no more so (and no less)
than the green-skirted
White-cheeked
Irish girls
Both are watched with bemusement
Amusement
By visitors from Sierra Leone
Viet Nam
Germany
Across the street

Waiting for a bus, earphones on, barely moving.
(But you can guess the beat
if not the style
of the current song
from how she bounces)

At a rave.

On Broadway.

At her boyfriend's party.

In front of cameras.

With her father.

With your daughters.

In daylight.

Out of sight.

In Kyoto

New York

New Delhi

Melbourne

Amsterdam

Morocco

London

Rio de Janeiro

Half a block away,

And for sheer joy.

(no subject)

I'm a little afraid to post this because

A) I feel like I'm crap at poetry, and this (Like the sonnet, which i may one day edit for this reason) is not even an hour old.
B) While the choice to *keep* the word girl was as deliberate as was the choice to drop the word "Oriental" (Because girl has a specific and valid meaning) it might be seen as problematic in itself.
C) Shweta_Naryan, as usual, started the theme (She also caused the sonnet that I did a while back, unwitting), and did a much better job in much less space.
(Read her lovely poem Here. ETA: oops. I failed to notice, in spite of her saying so explicitly, that she's locked it temporarily to give Star*line the chance to respond publicly to a complaint related to the poem she's responding to. I'll make sure to mention it and re-link if she opens it to the public. Because it's so much better than mine.)
D) Not sure if all the formatting will survive lj. (ETA: Yup. All the spacing within the lines went away. Oh, well.)

An Asian girl dances:

In hip-hop clubs
Laughing
Pony-tailed, among friends
Raises her hands in the air.
Like the music tells them all to do.

In the India School of Dance
On St. Mary's Road.
Urged by her mother when she was four,
Still struggling with the perfect precise shapes
her fingers will someday make.

All alone,
Hiding in the basement,
because she loves to wheel and twirl
But her big brother said she looks dumb.
So she hides
For now.
Maybe when she's six
She'll risk the living room again.

At the Ballet
For the first time
A minor part,
Toes taped,
Costumed to look like all the others
Hair bunned
Body aching
Forgetting the audience
Until the applause and the curtseys.
(In a few years,
when she thinks she'll feel like a grown woman,
a real member of the Ballet
Good Enough
Maybe she'll get the lead?)

At a multicultural festival
In the Korean Youth Troupe
Displaying months of effort for strangers
A display indeed,
But no more so (and no less)
than the green-skirted
White-cheeked
Irish girls
Both are watched with bemusement
Amusement
By visitors from Sierra Leone
Viet Nam
Germany
Across the street

Waiting for a bus, earphones on, barely moving.
(But you can guess the beat
if not the style
of the current song
from how she bounces)

At a rave.

On Broadway.

At her boyfriend's party.

In front of cameras.

With her father.

With your daughters.

In daylight.

Out of sight.

In Kyoto

New York

New Delhi

Melbourne

Amsterdam

Morocco

London

Rio de Janeiro

Half a block away,

And for sheer joy.