intimate | first apartment

• Main Author: Theodore
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Guelph 2024
• Subjects: anishina*
• Online Access: https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/footnotes/article/view/7838

The poem explores what it is like to live in a body that is constantly politicized, attacked, and marginalized, as many bodies are. It speaks to those who exist in bodies that experience intersectional forms of discrimination and oppression; those in queer and trans bodies, BIPOC, disabled, and fat bodies. The poem expresses a desire to escape from this politicization. It constructs the marginalized body as a divine, powerful being connected to the Earth, which is personified as a living body itself. By embracing the body itself, the speaker in the poem becomes divine along with the living body of the Earth. The Anishinaabe understandings of the interconnectedness of humans and nature inspired the poem. By connecting with the Earth and a sense of divinity, the body transcends the various oppressions that attempt to limit and slowly whither it to nothing.