Museum Of Everyone

FELISPEAKS (They/Them) FEAT DUNK MURPHY (He/Him) -

Commissionato da MOE, scritto da Felispeaks - MOE Inaugural Writer in Residence (2021) Accompagnamento musicale di Dunk Murphy.

If skin were coats we wore for a season. Leathered and old, furred with hair, holed and freckled. If we chose our shades like cufflinks, Measuring their style, bending them back and forth in undesirable light, To see accurately just how they glimmer, Which will spin the sparkle in the eye of an onlooker. Turning torsos back to front to observe you, In the street, In the office, in the Museum of Everyone. Which skin suit would you choose?

If hair were signatures we signed as our name, A custom old as every lineage, passed to the child and their own. If we straightened, curled and loc’ed our strands to spell our culture, To account for the tune in how you answer, If it meant a strangeness in head tilt, In how your neck stands at their pronunciation, If eyes roll at how you correct them, In the street, In the office, In the Museum of Everyone. Which title will you bear?

If your place of birth were to follow you abroad, Leave a trail of everything your people ever did, Will do, Have done, If it spat out your history before you got a chance, To interject, to protest, to explain the margins you existed in. If it offered its advice at refugee centers and then at your citizenship ceremony, Even when you’ve aged in new lands without its knowledge, And grew past its limits, If it were to speak for you in the street, In the office, In the Museum of Everyone, Where will you hail?

The skin I came with. The title they gave me. The land that made me. In the Museum of Everyone.