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(In response to Uganda’s anti-pornography/ Miniskirt ban)

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni recently signed a law that outlaws miniskirts in the east African nation. This poet attempts to make sense of the new law

As the darkest of nights
Meets the morning sun
Bodies are staged
Undressed
Despite the sunshine
Reduced
To nameless political projects
Miniskirts robbing their names
Bodies sacrificing names
To name miniskirts
Names in order for each day:
Power
Constructed
Politics
Undresses
Objectifies
Oppresses, oppresses, oppresses…

The last name
That has my state of being
Oppressed, fearful of my demise
I keep pulling and pulling and pulling
The miniskirt
To convince it
To rename it
Obedience
To save it from
Smelly, bloody back alleys
To save it from
The exploitative exhibit
Like as in a museum,

And after a regretful loss of life
That it might have lived
But didn’t
Surrendering freedom
Damned costly freedom
The miniskirt is convinced
To be renamed obedience
From airing everything in-between
Save it from stories of ruins
From a system
Taking
Raping
Raking
What is left of its skin,

The miniskirt is crowned, named
By the higher court
Obedience.

© afro’disiaticX / amira. ali