Family of Goofy Bodies
What stories must be released to make space in the body for freedom? To be — at home, fully alive, present, feeling, sensing, and connected?
Using shaking as metaphor and writing as medicine, Family of Goofy Bodies asks us to go beyond ideological understanding of whiteness to feel how it lives in our bodies as a crisis of energy and attention.
Tracing the lives and silences of her ancestors, Vero invites us to reanimate ourselves, finding new belonging to body, land, and cosmos. A collection of poetry broken into three parts — intimacy, lineage, and liberation — it’s a map, a practical yet mystical guide for metabolizing trauma and disconnection.
You can read a preview of this collection below. ‘Prairie Therapy’ was written while I was a writing resident at Art Farm in Nebraska.
“To love you is to walk the lands that birthed you and be shattered by the wounds of your ancestors stored in the body I’m kissing.”
(particularly) prairie therapy
in the barn of antiques
that didn't make it to the thrift store
before grandma died
a dictionary flips open to the letter 'p'
the word 'particularly'
stands out to to an exceptional degree
the prairie was a blanket
a french word for meadow
called the great plains
that stretched from
the feet of the rockies
to the missouri river
from canada to texas
tanji to the ioway
the prairie is mutually dependent
an estimated 0.1% remnant
in what is now called iowa
97% privately owned
an industrial agriculture sacrifice zone
but tall grass remains devoted
15 ft deep
it's significant
specific! that iowa—
the most biologically altered state—
is where i was restored
it was prescribed
you burn me to the ground
with your particularities, explicitly
your sounds
the limb lightning and ticking
our people made the same river dirty
karma is soybean green
john deere green
the color of yearning
seeping into chemical creeks
hazel eyes and trout flies
the horizon—
extremely visible here—
specifies where
responsibility lies
between expansion and contraction
fertility and your death
panorama
all four directions say
the soil will decide if we continue
if im alone im haunted
by people i no longer speak to
and climate changes we're getting used to
no pure choices
no pure attention
so every thing addictive
and i forget what feels good
in the old barn house
we ate mushrooms
and someone asked your name
before we diverged to cry
our separate ways—
me—i went to the pit in the ground
to find comfort in the sound
of my own breath
i’m starting to have moments where
i deeply crave myself
and yet i keep coming back to
stir relationship broth
drag spoon through awkward soup
talking vs. connecting
so what will you do with your peculiarities
if there's nothing particular about your pain?
come to the prairie and write poetry
with roots 15 ft deep?
the corn husks are still clasped in prayer
at this time of year
imagine porous people arriving here
in four directions!
for prairie therapy!
it's late summer
so the corn will be clapping
we've been protective of our pain
possessive even
paying a high premium
the prairie will teach us patience
to overcome victimization
from the soil up
mississippi models how
to redistribute
my pain is mine
thick in the atmosphere like Co2
your pain is mine particularly
photosynthesizes new pathways to pleasure
if you've questioned proximity
being close to everything
but stars
but plants
but people
is your freedom really in convenience?
on your personalized portals?
if you've probed privilege and
productivity to find freedom
in your hands, coursing up your arms, are you ready
to work as hard as your hard-working heart?
if you'd prefer power to the people
and participation over punitive penal systems
if you'd pulverize patriotism and compost poop
if you're skeptical when they say
progress, purpose-driven or policy
if you're into poetics, playing, and pillow fighting
if you've questioned philanthropy
private anything and property
or political ideology
if you're proud to come from poor people
if you want to be prepared
for a new world that's coming
whether we've planned for it
or not
if you're tired of pretending
pollution, and pleasantries
if you practice peace with praying feet
the prairie will protect you
yes, come where deer prance
precisely the heartland
don't fly over
please do stay a while
the prairie in particular needs presence
you want to hear the pros?
besides the meadowlark songs
and juiciest clouds?
a balance of opposites
flat green and vast blue
quiet warmth with the tallest grass so there's
always enough food
ceremony creekside
mice tattoo
pigs plucking guitars
foxes fiddling folk tales
crane on banjo before
firefly discos
crops in 9 year cycles
farmers in drag in grain silos
raves in freedom fields
stomping space for pow wow
the buffalo are grazing again
retired tractors play pool
artists in barns with fossils
wolves unschool
walk me home
to my ancestors
through the fields
with no where to plant my love for you
like an inhale stuck up my chimney head
i exhale prairie green
particularly
the color of liberation