Our bodies are not crime scenes
Every morning
‘I want the President’ to answer the invitation—
not crime but aftermath of statistics laws colonised language
I babble in aching logics, curling
watchful onlookers
into microselves. My rage writes Nudity’s script
soothes tired habits. A deregulated algorithm observes
every precipice, kicking words won’t cut it
still I come to them Flesh ushered
onto an upholstery train
can only follow the Paddy Wagon
of direction ancient rhythms humming their lines
Love is rejuvenated in spectral conspiracies
against the woman’s protest. She consecrates every sin
Naked passion postpones catharsis, is catharsis
Pulled out of the building, she swims strange backstroke
through the camera’s gaze reordering distress
with the authority of an apocalypse
Reckoning maps around her ankles
her movement an ablution
releasing
genderless strength, loosening along
its equations. And in that dream my woman laughter wanders
forever. She is narrative unmoored throwing facts into the sea
Morning spills out infecting neighbouring villages
I am just a schoolgirl sampling
the cave’s warm tang—clothes around my ankles—
And in that dream I fall but I keep moving. Her protest
shapeshifts, slicing waves alive to the body’s continual
palimpsest how it remembers backward to an unmade choice
Note: Quoted text, including the title, comes from footage of a woman arrested after a protest in Pretoria: News24 YouTube.
Fleur Lyamuya Beaupert (she/they) is a queer Australian writer of Tanzanian and Anglo-Indian descent. Fleur’s poetry and prose have recently been published in Not Very Quiet, Speculative City, Rigorous, Social Alternatives, Scum and Meniscus. They work as a policy officer in disability advocacy.
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