XX: No, not the rating
for porn flicks, or a row of kisses
on a love letter–
the chromosome that divides us
as a species into 2 rough halves.
I don’t want to say female,
I don’t want to say woman,
I want to use DNA,
which has no context beyond
its helices;
simple biological prompt to a body
that, if it lives long enough,
grows breasts & a place
for babies to build;
the matrix borrowed
from those XX bodies.
Made no better or worse than XY,
just a different kind of being;
inside a form that does not scatter eggs
on creek mud for fertilization,
but expressed in a body
that carries life, feeds
& nurtures it
when somehow
(it is a kind of magic,
birth;
though it is a violent
& bloody one)
what was once
connected
by that long rope of blood
pushes free & is named.
That somehow this XX
once encoded
marks its carrier vulnerable,
less valued,
but still property,
to be bought & sold,
traded;
sometimes stoned for saying no,
or, at times
for saying the wrong yes,
how the XX
body is at times
circumcised
to the point of death
for the sake of society,
or chastity, or beauty;
or how XX feet
were bound to an exact degree
of smallness, so they could never run
& barely walked in tiny steps,
& how those XX carriers
are not ruled by mind
but passion, unfit
to have a voice
that is taken seriously
is a global madness
transcending culture.
So, is it genetics
and landscape that define us,
or is it that damned apple
that made us both fall
that rules us?
Don’t forget
he tasted it, too
and knew the cost.
Susan Daniels Poetry 