Inspired by Mshairi’s poetry <\/a>and MentalAcrobatics’ lyric swapping skills <\/a>and with apologies to Grace Nichols <\/a>for altering the text of her poem Of Course When They Ask for Poems About the ‘Realities’ of Black Women<\/a><\/em>, I join fellow bloggers<\/a> in the google-bombing for Alaa <\/a>campaign.<\/p>\n

Of Course When They Ask
\nfor Poems About the ‘Realities’
\nof Egypt<\/a>….<\/p>\n

What they really want
\nat times
\nis a specimen
\nof an Egypt<\/a>ian king encased in a British museum<\/p>\n

Egypt<\/a>ian hieroglyphics
\netched on Egypt<\/a>ian pyramids
\nguarded by Egypt<\/a>ian Sphinxes
\nthey want an Egypt<\/a>ian body
\nswaddled in white robes and mummified
\nand validation
\nfor the stereotype
\nalready in their heads<\/p>\n

Or else they want
\ncelluloid myths
\nof a white Cleopatra<\/p>\n

I can say I can write
\nno poem big enough
\nto hold the essence<\/p>\n

of Egypt<\/a>
\nor an Egypt<\/a>ian woman
\nor an Egypt<\/a>ian man<\/p>\n

Maybe this poem is to say,
\nthat I like to see
\nall Egypt<\/a>ians
\nfree and unafraid to blog<\/p>\n

Typing away
\nwith each stroke of the keyboard
\nthe twisted self-negating
\nhistory
\nthey\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ve inherited<\/p>\n

Typing away
\nwith each stroke of the keyboard<\/p>\n

technorati tag: googlebombingforalaa <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspired by Mshairi’s poetry and MentalAcrobatics’ lyric swapping skills and with apologies to Grace Nichols for altering the text of her poem Of Course When They Ask for Poems About the ‘Realities’ of Black Women, I join fellow bloggers in the google-bombing for Alaa campaign. Of Course When They Ask for Poems About the ‘Realities’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,11],"tags":[89,32,31,97],"class_list":{"0":"post-281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa","7":"category-blogsphere","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-blogging","10":"tag-blogs","11":"tag-blogsphere","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Y7Vr-4x","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}