India Lena González | Fiercer Still, Fiercer Yet | Poets Resist

India Lena González is a poet, educator, artist, and Sagittarius originally from Washington, D.C. She received her BA from Columbia University, where she graduated with honors, and is a recent MFA graduate from NYU’s Creative Writing program. She is the current Raab Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers. In addition to her passion for writing, India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor. She lives in Harlem with her beloved twin.

Poets Resist
Edited by Kwame Opoku-Duku
September 17, 2019

India Lena González

Fiercer Still, Fiercer Yet

showing off nana’s red silk lingerie

i am splayed out on the couch

legs all o p e n &

i am not a female poet

i am of the male variety

o the slack i’m cut

when i’m this all-knowing muscle

how unrestricted it is within me

for i too have wrestled a man to the

floor i have punched my own brother

i have licked his blood from the wall later that night

it’s brutal

the way i sleep

with my fists wound so tightly up

like my father i am my father & also his father

i am most likely therefore all the fathers

in the yearbook i was named “most likely to kill someone with my eyes”

twin was “most likely to start world war iii”

& this is just the reality we live in

i am my father at age 25

i am my father yelling in the streets

walking all bow-legged

i am here on this couch

with my limbs so far apart

thinking of all the ways i’ve been known to —

WATCH ME WRITE IN ALL CAPS SUCKA

see that’s not what i wanted at all

LISTEN TO ME

i have the capacity within my bones

i just have to reach into my blood & pull it out

the damn thing gets stuck sometimes

in the ovaries

it gets stuck

in the ovaries in the uterus

as they say my machismo gets stuck

in this slightly shifted uterus of mine

the doctoress reached so far up

i thought she touched rib

i thought she whispered adam

& i whimpered because

it wounded me this being-a-woman business

my skin suit stretched from the inside

with two fingers i am not a female poet

the ferocity of my body as the female body as the male body i am the white male body

the things i take for granted

for i am zeus

a totally erotic cult figure

with too many heinous children

it’s brutal

the way i sleep

with my fists wound so tightly up

the permanent wrinkles in my sheets