Fed a Lie
a poem by Lenora Rand
We have been fed a lie.
We have been fed this lie, over and over.
It’s been stuffed down our throats
Until we couldn’t scream no matter how much we wanted to.
We have become sick from this lie.
Erased by it.
Silenced by it.
Locked in a basement by it.
Shut down and pushed around and beat the fuck up by it.
Shot dead in the street by it.
This lie has been a killer. The poison.
Strangling our hearts.
Snuffing the breath from our lungs.
This lie.
This simple lie.
This all-encompassing lie.
Presented as this simple,
All-encompassing truth:
The body isn’t good.
These bodies we were born with.
Your body.
My body.
Any body.
Not good.
Not good enough.
This body is
Too fat.
Too slutty.
Too black
Too deviant.
Too weird.
Too small, too big, too loud, too much.
Too sexy. Not sexy enough.
Too ugly.
Too brown.
Too yellow.
Too broken.
Too scarred.
Too old. Gray. Wrinkled.
Too slow.
Too different.
Too queer.
So very obviously gay.
And trans?
Too much.
We are all too much
And never enough.
This lie.
This simple lie.
This all-encompassing lie.
Presented as this simple,
All-encompassing truth.
We’ve heard it from our families and friends, our enemies and our Facebooks, from our TVs and our music and from anyone and everyone trying to sell us something. And we’ve heard it from our pastors, our church elders and from our theologians who say they speak for God.
Who say they speak for God, but who all seemed to have missed what God spoke in the garden.
Missed that moment when God looked at us and said…
This is good. All good.
This is lip-smacking good.
And in case we didn’t hear God the first time, in case we missed it, and we clearly missed it, Jesus showed up,
Fully human.
In a full-on human and beloved
“In whom I am well pleased.”
body.
God got skin. God got skin. God got skin to go skin to skin with us.
So we would know. So we could roll it around on our tongues every time we ate bread, drank wine.
Jesus said,
This is my body.
So we could finally taste and see.
So we could finally say goodbye to the lie.
So we could finally stand in all our
Wild and holy flesh and proclaim
This is my body
It is called beloved.
And it is good.
© Plural Guild 2020
Purchase a video performance of this poem here.