Womanhood???? There's a lot to discuss! (Head off and Split)

"Do away with the watery gray eyes, the impolite razor-sharp fins, the succulent heart, tender roe, delicate sweet bones?"

Having control over your butchers knife can be both healing and destructive. Nikky Finney's poems are filled with sharpness and written by the blood that trickles off. She chops up her work into three sections, each one showing the duality of control. having control over your own well being verses having the control of someone else well being. As I was reading each butchered section I found most of my "razor-sharp fins" and "delicate sweet bones" in "The Head ・Over ・Heels" section. The way Finney describes what womanhood looks like for many women of color is bittersweet. I found myself not to long ago "willing to go blind, lose her obeying-girl tongue, her momentary sight, for any hot lemony tremble of the long pencils flash ever again". fighting to unlearn my own cycles of silence that I have been forced or taught into. Finney reminded me of that struggle between refusing to have our womanhood pre-packaged "Head off and Split" style and realizing how sharp those razor fins can be when not removed for us. Healing is painful but it is necessary. Healing is never a rose bush without the thorns. Womanhood for women of color is pre-defined and pre-cut to fit white womanhood standards. We are taught that this the only true form of womanhood, the only acceptable version of it. Through her poetry Finney denies this binary. She defines womanhood for women of color as "a women with film reels for eyes". Defining and connecting our womanhood to the collection of our past experiences and the experiences of our ancestors. She makes a point to honor the intersectionalities between brown womanhood and black womanhood. How those two can overlap but still are unique experiences that can not be claimed by the other. Finney also speaks about the displacement of black and brown womanhood. How "Mapmakers, and others, who draw important things, do not want us to know this". They do not want us to realize the ways that white womanhood can be dismembering and violent to black and brown womanhood. Because if we become conscious of this it is easier for "brown girl levitation" to take place. Once we are able to define womanhood for ourselves, once we are able to say no to the butcher that rips out our bones, we can finally kiss "every constellation hiding in the sky of [our] body". Agreeing to our lives being changed forever because we can now channel energies that uplift our womanhood. We have control over our own knives and with sharpness we are able to chose what we wish to keep and what we wish to throw away. So that we can heal. So that we can live.