Olive Oil

Caseena Karim

 

my grandmother prays

to a man pale enough

for a public to adore

 

she tells me,

whats mine is yours

as she takes olive oil

and paints a cross

on my forehead

 

something i will not

think much about until

I lean on my lovers breast

 

crying as a white man

is made the figurehead

of this country where

the intersections of my identity

don’t align with Gods trinity

 

where the ideals of a man

who incites violence

are seen as heroic

 

where blood is bleached

until it is white again

white on white on white

until America is great again

 

my queer body

juts out in white spaces

as white gazes tell me

to try and blend in

 

just like my grandmother

pressed olive oil

into my forehead

 

into my skin. 

 

This poem was created after the election of Trump, the day that America decided it was okay that my life, the life of my girlfriend, my family, and my community did not matter. I grew up trying to achieve a standard of beauty, or rather a standard of whiteness that I could never achieve, praying to a white man who could never answer my problems. We need to break this violent cycle of whitewashing, and replace it with images that strive for queer and trans people of color excellence, we need a platform for our voices to be heard and a space to just be. The change I want to see more immediately is for all of my loved ones to have the priviledge of a happy life.  

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