2/16/20, 1(48 PM Black Latina Girlhood Poetics of the Body: Church, Sexuality and Dispossession « Post45 Page 1 of 9 http://post45.org/2020/01/black-latina-girlhood-poetics-of-the-body-church-sexuality-and-dispossession/ L Black Latina Girlhood Poetics of the Body: Church, Sexuality and Dispossession Omaris Z. Zamora 01.21.20 ike Xiomara, the teenage protagonist of Elizabeth Acevedo's poetry novel The Poet X, I was always afraid of getting disciplina — of getting caught up and revealed as an imposter within the church. I walked the tightrope breaking every sacrament that took me away from my body. As a teenager, I wasn't supposed to masturbate almost every night, called by the flesh and the possibilities it offered. As a college student, I wasn't supposed to smoke weed and I wasn't supposed to hold on to remnants of my Pentecostal youthhood while exploring what it meant to spend time being and feeling my body and recognizing that it had a life of its own. I didn't think I was wearing masks — there were just parts of myself I strategically omitted. I shifted through different subjectivities depending on where I was and with whom. At church, I was a youth leader at the mostly-Puerto-Rican church where my accent became heavily Puerto Rican because I was born and raised in Humboldt Park, but also because being Dominican or Black wasn't "in" yet. At school, I was the proud nerdy ChiDominicana who was president of her Latina sorority chapter and would tell it like it is. The hermanos at the church probably couldn't tell I was going dancing almost every weekend or heading to the college bar night every Wednesday with her Bay Area Chicana bestie, followed by hitting up a bong at the frat house down the street. In my most private space, I was all of these. If God was seer and knower of everything then he was probably the only one that knew who I really was — at least that's what I believed. Yet the shame always made my cheeks warm at church when they would remind us not to give in to the desires of the flesh. We were reminded to stay virgins, and yet not touch ourselves. We were to wait until marriage, and only then it would be okay to have sex and pay attention to our bodies for the consumption of another. How did any of this make sense? My body cried for attention from me, for love from me. How was I not going to give in when this same sacred body was deemed undesirable by others, unworthy of attention, and supposedly disgusting to look at? But my fear of losing a space of community, fellowship, and healing through song kept me from leaving the church. Back in high school, my best friend was the pastor's daughter — a light-skinned petite The Body of Contemporary Latina/o/x Poetry Post45: Contemporaries