This poem was originally published in a print anthology of the 9th World Poetry Festival in Kolkata, India.
For a woman to write history
is an old way of telling time,
yet she is not ancient
but a girl who stares into the barrel of a gun.
I do not imagine myself in a tunnel.
I do not imagine a helicopter, even I
do not imagine the diary of Ho Chi Minh,
for then I must imagine myself inside a jail cell,
and for a woman to be in a jail cell
when her body is already a prison,
I ask the historian to imagine the impossibility
of writing time through her black, infinite eyes.
Sophia Terazawa
THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015
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by Sophia Terazawa
For a woman to write history
is an old way of telling time,
yet she is not ancient
but a girl who stares into the barrel of a gun.
I do not imagine myself in a tunnel.
I do not imagine a helicopter, even I
do not imagine the diary of Ho Chi Minh,
for then I must imagine myself inside a jail cell,
and for a woman to be in a jail cell
when her body is already a prison,
I ask the historian to imagine the impossibility
of writing time through her black, infinite eyes.
THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015
Read the full newsletter here »