I can breathe
I can breathe because
Although I'm terrified whenever I see a blue uniform, I pass easily as white, so chances are, their attentions are elsewhere.
I can breathe because if I do get stopped for any number of reasons, chances are, I'll go home after little more than a desk appearance.
I can breathe because
Although I am trans, queer, poor, disabled, of mixed non-European heritages, pierced, tatooed etc., in this country, even after a civil war, Selma, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and countless others who fought for dignity and equality, my skin tone alone, an accident of birth, still grants me greater privelege.
I can breathe because
I am not Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tarika Wilson, Tamir Rice, Yvette Smith, etc. etc. etc. etc.
I can still breathe
Until however, my siblings are safe
I will not breathe free.
I will not breathe free.
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Seeds In The Vacuum
- Inbar Frishman
- Haifa, Israel
- Inbar Frishman, is an Israeli/ American, confessional poet and spoken word artist. Informed by the likes of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Etgar Keret, Gary Snyder, T'ao Ch'ien and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ms. Frishman's poems "...refuse to hang the reader up with ego driven, adjective weighted lines, and instead, draw them into intimate moments of transformation, where words themselves become secondary, and one is left haunted by the feeling that the experience on the page had been ones' own all along". Her past writings have appeared in multiple editions of Metromorphosis and Public Illumination Magazine, as well as on velvetparkmedia.com. Inbar's first book of poetry, "Things Missed in Exile", is available either through Nirala Publishing, or from the author at readings or by request. A limited number of signed copies are currently available through St. Mark's Books, in New York.