Here I Am

here i am
scrubbed down
cocoa buttered and vaselined

(negro-scented!)

here i am, brown black me
with my pussy-afro smellin
like I don’t wash right
it be wild, exotic, jungle-scented
gets in to my panties, on the sofa too
a puerto rican I used to mess wit
told me I stunk good was like africaharlemphilly
brooklynmississippi to him
permanent my scent my first tat-
too it be blues jazz hip hop
all rebel, riot, revolution, righteous
i put my nose up to the crotch
of some white girl’s jeans once and there was no scent
dont know what I expected just wasnt ready
for there to be no flowers, no peaches, no drama,
no drums, no earth, no tribes, no incense, no honey
no bogaloo, no history, no rivers, no sermon, no nothin
I dont trust no woman that dont got
no smell to em how you know you you if you
don’t got no scent ‘cause here i am sittin on the edge of the tub
bathed good and shinin and i still smell me
full in my nose, and i cant imagine havin no scent
nothin to sniff, to inhale, and here i am, me, in a bathroom
with
a cold radiator lovin my me-smell, my brown blackness
and the bluesjazzhiphop in my bones and blood but sad too
for a past i cant undo sad for malcolm and martin and coretta
and good viola and little gavin cato and grandma lubertha and
granddaddy jim and uncle alphonza yeah here I am
clean and dirty with birthin scars on my belly, my smell risin up
to my nostrils

*

Note: A poem based on Carolyn Rodgers’ Me, In Kulu Se & Karma

*

Michelle McEwen is a mother who writes (or a writer who mothers). Either way she is a writer and has had work published in Poet/Artists, The Caribbean Writer, and Best New Poets. She is also the author of a chapbook: Delicious Dangerous (part of the MiPOesias Magazine Chapbook series).