Poetry Reading: My Body Isn’t a Protest, by Nickie DeSardo

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

My body isn’t a protest.
It’s a betrayal.

I’ve been trapped in here for years,
buried inside a harp seal,
wide-eyed with hakapiks overhead.
It was silent when I wanted to scream.
It froze when I wanted to fight.
It stayed when I should have fled.
My body isn’t a protest.

It’s a betrayal.
It’s a betrayal.

Even my body knows it,
marks its own cells as intruders,
attacks itself,
as if the outside world wasn’t enough,
it joins the conquest,
and forms an internal massacre.
Hand me the club.

I’ll do it myself.