The Plan | A Poem By Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, we’re highlighting a creative mind using land use, advocacy, and art to realize a more just and sustainable future.
Aimée Okotie-Oyekan is an Oregon-based poet, interdisciplinary environmentalist, and land use planner. Last summer, we were thrilled to have her join us as a featured speaker at our Abundant Oregon celebration.
As closing remarks, Aimée delivered a deeply inspiring original poem, woven with evocative lived experience and arresting perspective on the challenges and opportunities for equitable land use planning.
"My poetry stems from my perspectives and lived experiences as a queer immigrant daughter of the African diaspora. When I consider my relationship to poetry, I only hope to deepen its potential as a healing modality, a practice of bearing witness, a space for radical imagining, a convener of community, and a facilitator of transformative change. With the increasing complexity of social, environmental, and political crises, greater attention is being paid to the role of art as a medium for changemaking; I am grateful poetry, with its gentle militancy, lends itself as an accessible means of resistance."
- Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
Read Aimée’s original poem, “The Plan,” below, and explore more of her impressive work at aimeeokotieoyekan.com
The Plan
By Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
I haven't been feeling like myself lately.
The purpose of this division
I have been feeling isolated and out of touch—
is to ensure opportunity for the provision
and like my body is no longer my own,
of adequate numbers of needed housing units,
because my cells attack each other without my consent,
the efficient use of buildable land within urban growth boundaries
causing unpredictable and painful inflammation.
and to provide greater certainty in the development process so as to reduce
housing costs.
Stress and anxiety about the future of the world,
The mix and density of needed housing,
and about the positioning of my black female body within it,
is determined in the housing needs projection.
exacerbate the swelling in my tissues.
Sufficient buildable land shall be designated on the comprehensive plan map
All the while, I am starting to believe the stories the world tells me
to satisfy housing needs by type and density range
about who I am, and who I am allowed to be:
as determined in the housing needs projection.
othered, invisible, unbelonged;
The local buildable lands inventory must document the amount
my value reduced to labor, productivity, outcomes.
of buildable land in each residential plan designation.
In believing my work was my worth,
I made the fatal error of thinking myself
a worthy sacrifice. A life for a life. My own for the planet's.
Demonstrate to me: what is a body's zoned capacity for labor?
For extraction? For exploitation?
Study me: am I connected? Livable?
Or am I condemned? Blighted inside? Nonconforming?
Show me: what structures are missing in my middle?
How can something as complex as the world embodied by my flesh
ever be clear or objective?
By what means could you ever assess my value,
condition my use, police my power?
Never. Not in my backyard.
I would like to appeal for my healing.
Remove the plotlines where there were no prior confines.
Cease to census what a number can’t make sense of;
attempting measure to how much love in a square foot, how much joy in an acre.
This Life is unzonable. Uncodable.
Redistribute the land. Raze the settler state.
A decolonized domain is imminent.
I motion to let liberation have the right of way.
All in favor, say “aye”.
Copyright © May 2023, The Plan by Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic methods without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.