J’AI L’HONNEUR DE PRÉSENTER À L’ACADÉMIE LES ORGANES GÉNITAUX DE CETTE FEMME*
Isabel Cristina Legarda
an elegy for Sarah Baartman, 1789-1815
Seven thousand miles from home / people would pay to pinch her ass. /
Her body a map, an accusation. / A proof. /
People would pay to pinch her ass. / They called her labia minora an “apron.” /
A proof— / she walked with head high. /
They called her labia minora an apron. / Sinus pudoris. Macronympha. /
She walked with head high / watching where their eyeballs turned. /
Sinus pudoris. Macronympha. / Her mind a dancing bear /
watching where their eyeballs turned, / counting canes while fingers prodded. /
Her mind a dancing bear / afloat over the salons, /
shining pearls while fingers prodded, / bustles blossomed, whalebone strained. /
Afloat over the salons, / cherubs smiled above the orgies. /
Bustles blossomed, whalebone strained. / Horses’ hooves beat time on cobbles. /
Cherubs smiled above the orgies, / their goddess irresistible, rotund. /
Horses’ hooves beat time on cobbles / bearing men with walking sticks and sweaty palms, /
their goddess irresistible, rotund, / their syphilitic cocks distending. /
Men with walking sticks and sweaty palms / grope her skimpy threads, /
their syphilitic cocks distending. / She traces with her eye the pattern on the rug. /
gropes the skimpy threads, / crouches in a circus animal’s hide. /
She traces with her eye the pattern on the rug / in a musée de l’homme, a death cast, a brain, /
crouches in the carcass of herself, / pickled vulva on display. /
In the Musée de l’Homme: a death cast, a brain, / her body a map, an accusation, /
pickled vulva on display / seven thousand miles from home.
* “I have the honor of presenting this woman’s genital organs to the Academy.” Quotation from a written essay about a postmortem dissection of Sarah Baartman’s skull, buttocks, and genitalia by Georges Cuvier, a French zoologist considered by some the father of nineteenth-century “race science” and paleontology.
Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Smartish Pace, The Dewdrop,The Ekphrastic Review, The Lowestoft Chronicle, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published in April 2024 by Yellow Arrow Publishing. She can be visited at www.ilegarda.com or on Instagram (@poetintheOR).
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