Mixed-Queer-Desi-Euro-American-Radical-Womxn-Artist
By Zubeda Dhada
Diaspora is my home:
I live inside of a quiet chakra of overlapping hues
Whose color is only understood
By being.
Definition has edges and endings
I know any one and anyone has open ends,
Ends like knots in nets
Stretching into seas-
But I have felt the contours of my existence
And found a center that is round and comforting
It is locked, a wooden puzzle
Solved from the inside out: an impossible object, a seed, a relic.
I have looked at others’ designs
And worked
Craftwomanlike, artist of myself
Reading my Braille to distill, to color-block:
I wear signals de la mer, glancing light off Mondrian scales.
But you are not equipped to cross ice
By seeing the flatness of a frosted lake in winter:
My breadth and depth are necessary knowledge
When I am happened upon in this state of water
My volume speaks:
I am not another.
To know me is to learn me- I am required reading.
To see me is to draw me from memory- I cannot model.
To hear me is to listen with a magical organ
That transmutes my words
Into belief.
