Theory My Natural Brown Ass

I’ve paid for too many degrees,
posited too many historical positions,
made too many semiotic apologetics,
forwarded far too many feminist responses
to too many textual materialities

to have an ass this big.

In theory, my ass
does not signify.

But this insistence of the body,
this non-linguistic expression
of inertia and caloric lust,
is a corporeal truth that mental exercise
can’t deconstruct.

Or is it just an inverted absence?
The presence of the lack
of any Aryan heritage?

I’m the post-colonial girl
who went abroad and squatted and lunged
while the maid, snapping out
wet laundry, watched.
Skinny brown bitch, was what I thought!
The poor men looked at my ass
like it was a pair of Boston Cremes.

But I was raised on white girls’ dreams.
This juicy back might fly in hip hop,
but I meant to fit
into tinier social circles,
and JLo’s Butt’s alread taken up
two stools at the representation bar.
Missy E’s already gone
bonh bo bonh bonh
all the way to the bank.

My ass doesn’t give a shit
that my mind is post third wave.
It is imperialist, a booty-Gap
expanding into a third space: the place

beyond my seams. Who cares
that sizes are all ‘seems’ anyway:
you shop, you walk
the slippery significatory slope
on which an ‘S’, ‘M’ or ‘L’ might fall.
The mall

is the spatial organization
of desire, I know, but
does that make my ass look small?

Sonnet L’Abbé