Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer, sick, and disabled nonbinary femme writer and cultural worker of Burger/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent.
This generous, brilliant femme gifts the world with her wild and gorgeous prose and poetry, and well as editing, performing and doing social justice advocacy. She has been published in a whole bunch of anthologies like Femmethology and Octavia’s Brood and her own books include Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home and Lovecake. Please read more about this prolific, inspiring femme on her website, http://www.brownstargirl.org/, and whet your appetite for more of her essential queer art with the sample below.
Deep Gratitude to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha!
Femmes are film stars
in the movies of our lives
Instead of dishwater we choose danger
grab belt buckles, smooth lip gloss
and make eye contact
We put Bollywood to shame
We’re the stars of our own danger-filled whirlwind
There are dramatic plot twists and more edge-of-the seat moments
than you can believe
and suspensions of disbelief?
Girl, you know we suspend disbelief
do shit ain’t nobody supposed to be able to pull off
We’re our own romantic epic
like Frida in Paris
Audre in Mexico
standing on two tree-trunk thighs
planted firm and swishing
When we’re girls and someone said diva
we breathed in that word
and it turned into a glimpse of a woman we saw once
on a multiplex screen
a beautiful lady
who shone in her skin
and rose out of it
Maybe it was our favorite aunty
or our mama when she was young
Maybe it was Frida or Rosario
Maybe we’ve never seen the one that could be us yet
but we make her up
we make her up outta thin air
outta brilliance and ass
from “femmes are film stars” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Visible: A Femmethology Volume Two, edited by Jennifer Clare Burke
Every Friday, I will showcase a queer femme goddess. Suggestions welcome!
The Total Femme 