The Poetry Project

Under The Gaze of the Others

Lara Mimosa Montes

But no one talked about Fanon that spring. Not once.
Or the restructuring of the world. Its borders, our loss.
And to make the something shimmer we let it bruise us.
If we are complicit, and I was, because desire. Because
Whiteness. But then my name would not be my name.
And I wouldn’t have to rely on this principle of accretion
To say something profound like, “Imagine writing
For the someone on the other side of yourself.”
A stranger undone by the love of another stranger.
A pastness so past I could not forget its goneness.

Issue 13

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