I’ll peel off my clothes

protest with you

cup my breasts

let the collar bone stand out

defy defy defy

(This is a response to 'My body, my choice': Exiled Iranian women pose nude for video in protest against sexual oppression in their native country. The video hopes to boost sales of the Nude Photo Revolutionaries Calendar in homage to an Egyptian activist who was vilified in the Middle East for publishing a naked photo of herself.)

I’ll peel off my clothes

protest with you

cup my breasts

let the collar bone stand out

defy defy defy

the skeleton inside

the skeletons outside

it’s my body, I will say

and sell it

for money

for a cause

for dissent

for someone to notice I am a woman

equal to man

Equal?

where is the phallus between my thighs?

does any man show it off to

defy defy defy

is this not another shackle

where flesh has eyes

and skin is veil?

god too gave a fig leaf

god’s men want to bind

you throw the gagging raiments away

your breasts and belly look us in the eye

I can see you whole

the man you want to be equal to won't

he sees your skin

imagines the trickle

gliding over it

I’ll peel off my clothes

if you convince me

that the man watching

will not blow smoke rings in my face

or spit out curses

or look through the microscope

for warts, for unshaved hair

tell me

if I need to grow a stubble to be equal

to the man fiddling with his zipper

that I will be woman even when I wear something

a little heavier than my nakedness

when I lie down on the sand

touch my feathery self

I feel equal to the sky

what is there to defy?

~FV

© Farzana Versey