BGL Chapbook

Ashley M. Young, creator of Brown Girl Love, here! I just finished a chapbook associated with this project called Brown Girl Love. A chapbook is a 16 to 20 page mini-book of poetry and I am now in the process of editing and publication under Brown Girl Love Press in late 2012/2013.

Here’s the opening poem to the book and the inspiration for Brown Girl Love:

a secret place for brown girls

we would gather at a tree-house called woman

and live in her lovely branches filled with light.

we’d break bark and dance barefoot

in the ancient blood of a dying nature.

we’d drink fire and spit out words of gold

and embrace with arms as big as the sky.

we’d get naked and hang up our masks,

our proper English and our nine to fives

and try not to sleep with each other.

we’d tell loud stories until our sides

split with laughter and find Africa hidden in our eyes.

we’d brush nappy strands and re-twist aging locs

without question, confess and give birth

to what young girls hide and loss and forget.

we would use our hands solely for creating

and stop placing them over our mounds

like our cunts are a dirty secret birthplace.

we’d invite a trauma specialist to tend to

gushing wounds, re-stitch the unraveling seams

of the heart and be grown women rocked to sleep

by healing hands.  we’d breathe deeply

so much so that air would have to bring in

re-enforcements and we’d exhale shamelessly.

i’d invite all the bruised up woman i’ve ever

been in love with and we’d chant to the goddess

in a language we could all understand – ase, ase, ase