Dominique Christina - Anarcha Speaks

THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES The National Poetry Series was founded in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded annually by the Lannan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, Barnes & Noble, the Poetry Foundation, the PG Family Foundation and the Betsy Community Fund, Joan Bingham, Mariana Cook, Stephen Graham, Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds, William Kistler, Jeffrey Ravetch, Laura Baudo Sillerman, and Margaret Thornton. For a complete listing of generous contributors to the National Poetry Series, please visit www.nationalpoetryseries.org. 2017 COMPETITION WINNERS The Lumberjacks Dove
GennaRose Nethercott
Chose by Louise Gluck for Ecco Anarcha Speaks
Dominique Christina
Chosen by Tyehimba Jess for Beacon Press feeld
Jos Charles
Chosen by Fady Joudah for Milkweed Editions What It Doesnt Have to Do With
Lindsay Bernal
Chosen by Paul Guest for University of Georgia Press Museum of the Americas
J. Michael Martinez
Chosen by Cornelius Eady for Penguin Books A few weeks before sitting down to write this foreword, a cadre of Black women activists were successful in leading a long campaign to remove a statue of J. Marion Sims from the Manhattan streets by Central Park, where for decades he was honored as the Father of Gynecology.

Sims wrote his legacy of healing in the blood of enslaved Black women who had no choice but to surrender to his scalpel and thread, who endured his harrowing research only to be relegated to the footnotes of history. 800 dollar mule 800 dollar mule that what massa say over the loud i make wit blood. Dominique Christina plunges deep into a cauldron of searing ancestral voices to give us this arsenal of poems, voices, testimonies, and dreams that have been waiting to stretch and wail to us in this twenty-first century. She brings us the story of Anarcha, thought to be one of the main subjects of Marion Simss bloody, painful experiments that cemented his reputation in the field of gynecology. Anarcha and eleven other slave women were Simss subjectstheir bodies volunteered by their masters. massa yellin bout: what us gon do wit a nigga gal caint keep her own water and 800 dollar mule! i paid 800 dollars for this mule for what? Branded expendable by virtue of their gender and race, Sims also believed these qualities rendered Black women impervious to pain.

Anarcha and her fellow subjects bore the price of scientific progress with stitch after painful stitch at the core of their beings. Sims subjected Anarcha to thirteen experimental surgeriesall without anestheticto perfect his treatment of vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas. doctor dont do slaving like regular folkhe built soft, like somethin younghe dont yell much/ always readinput his fingers in you like nothinpush on yo stomach/ make you squatthen write it down. In these poems, we witness the poet weaving in and out of the most intimate injuries with inquiries in search of answers only the body can provide. From fertility to pregnancy, from delivery to debridement, Dominique Christina takes us beyond the mere medical witness of these womens bodies and into their tapestry of dream and desire. With masterful use of image and an ear for language that haunts and glows in poem after poem, the poet has delivered us from one century to another in conversation with the spirit of Anarcha. And when we read her story, of forced labor and torturous experiments that resulted in gynecological treatments still in practice, we are elegantly and ruthlessly reminded of gender and racial inequities that dog our nation to this day.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy or delivery complications than white women. This poets ability to capture voices from the past that ring true to the present is a gift that we need to listen to carefully today. Not only because the voices bring urgent parable and insight from the frontline between degradation and spirit in the nineteenth century but also because of the richness, depth, and uncompromising humanity with which these poems are written and this singular story is told. A story that, in its telling, lets us know in no uncertain terms: heaven must be insurrection. TYEHIMBA JESS Anarcha SpeaksSECTION I

fmassa come in like he know i caint cry new tears he take what he want he keep a hot hand every new hatred cinch my throat closed. he take me give me a name made outta iron he say it til i aint myself i, sheet rock. i the upset of everything, unholy, this. aint got god enough to leave me even a minute for myself all the folk in front of me and behind me the ones kneelin next to me sufferin the same sun i see em all and my own self too we bottom of the boat heavy heavy we swayin in our own shit and vomit caint stop it we rollin over each other we cry out we bribe god or whatever listenin we shackled in the deep we losin everything these ghosts i got like to remember like to wallop me wont let none of it leave i turn against myself caint find my own feet under all this mud all these graves all that ocean tryin to know me i say get off me but nothin gets lighter i bottom of the boat heavy heavy i drownin always i floatin and flailin and losin my prayers these ghosts i got got too many names too many tongues I dizzy from listenin to em all. i wanna hear it right but seem like god always takin somethin and wantin somethin all at once and all you can do is call it his will like this one time massa grab a boy named Clink tie him to the sycamore the one hang heavy in june and flay him for no reason cept to show us we could give our blood to them branches too he do it easy cuz he can just like god and we gotta stand there and watch the leaves shiver from the spill of this boy and be thankful it aint us. far as I can feel it Job aint nothin but a workday wit massa. the only thing promised is the bleedin. got a rhythmic dread now cuz in spite of myself i been prayin and tryna see will god show up but you pay for that kinda faithfulness wit sorrow when dont nothin move and massa still massa and all you got is the ugly of the world and your own dumb wish that light could get in and you get where you could punch a hole in the sky and wear your enemys teeth around your neck and never believe in nothin again not god not prayer not tomorrow but then what i got what chance i got to slip outta this dream long enough to try a savior and see do he believe in me enough to come by here? noiseless as a grave the missus caint get an egg to fry right she need lemons in the water lace on the table fruits sittin heavy in big ole glass bowls i takes the brown ones stick em in my apron juice run down like church pulp-sweet and hidden the missus dont know how to keep the soup pots full. she sick wit lovelessness she preach. she beat til she think she got somethin she can use. but me? i thick. i thick wit secrets... only thing i got thats mine.