Today’s episode is guest hosted by Samiya Bashir.

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Samiya Bashir, and this is The Slowdown. 

The other day a friend asked who, or what, I thought I was. I replied casually, offhandedly even: “Stardust,” and I mean, that’s technically true. But I don’t think it was the answer my interlocutor was looking for. Oftentimes, these questions are lobbed with the intention of cutting the respondent down to what the questioner believes is a more appropriate size.

Stretched out in a bathtub, with nothing at hand but the poetry of my own body and the water in which it’s immersed, I often find myself asking that same question. As I take in each of my physical so-called flaws, that question of what or who I am can turn markedly unkind. I see scars here, stretch marks there, the ruptures on my hands and feet where my infant self–having been born, perhaps strangely, with six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot–was forcibly, surgically “corrected.”

A rather curvy, Black, American woman, I long ago grew accustomed to my body being subjected to the judgment of others and found wanting. I know I’m not alone here, based on anecdotal evidence, and on study after study, including those which have shown the deleterious effects of social media on young women and girls. What I know, too, is that at the end of the day the makeup of the body in question does not even matter to those who would throw their biting grenades. 

Today’s poem, too, asks who we think we are.  That existential question can feel like judgment or threat, but the poet turns it back toward the daily realities of our own agency. What I mean is this: we ourselves get to CHOOSE the answer to that question, every moment of every day. We get to choose the WHO at least – and what a gift that the WHAT remains what it’s always been: stardust. All we have to do is shine.

A Backstory Beyond My Recounting
by Paulann Petersen

Unaccountably old, the world is a world class
self-starter, ever used to making itself anew
again and again out of the makings of itself—
from that first stellar stuff.

I must take care in such a world—
careful of where I place my feet,
of what I pick up, of how I use
the pen gleaming so old in my hand.

I’m writing myself onto this paper
that was once a pine that was cone
that was cloud not so long before having been
ocean that was the prior glint of rain.
With care I must choose the words
to write onto this sea
that too is a seed that too
is the sky’s overcast.

This moment’s ink lays down its darkness,
giving off a wet light before it dries.
The pen in my hand has—just five words ago—
contrived to make that mark of its own name,
and now will do so one more time
before I end, calling itself
Reconfigured Star.

“A Backstory Beyond My Recounting” by Paulann Petersen from MY KINDRED © 2023 Paulann Petersen. Used by permission of Salmon Poetry.