The Body as Stone
Black masculine body in cracked clay and gold fissures. Dust lifting off the shoulders. Caption: My body is not property. It is stone.
Issue 1 • Jul / Aug 2025 • Root • Survival • Ancestry • Safety • The Black Body Is Not Public Property
CZITCZAT Press • Issue 1
THE BLACK BODY IS NOT PUBLIC PROPERTY
Root issue. Stone, ancestry, legislation, witness, survival. This first volume opens where flesh meets law, where image meets ownership, and where the body refuses public claim.
Drop Date • Aug 31 / Sept 1 2025
Inside the Temple
Page 2 • Editorial Sermon
Inside the Temple
I was born into a name I never wanted. A junior to a man I watched beat my mother, a shadow I was forced to wear like a chain. So I burned it. I carved a new one into my own skin. I named myself free.
The family tried to own me. The church tried to save me. The streets tried to devour me. And I let them stare, touch, objectify. But I bit back. I smiled while sharpening the blade. I glittered, I scarred, and behind every mask was a wound I refused to leave untended.
They fetishized my ass. They measured my dick. They wanted to shrink me to parts. But I am not parts. I am whole, even when I want more. I am not their fetish. I am my own altar.
Stones. Metals. Jewels. Gold dripping down my collarbone, silver ringing on my hands, gems holding my spirit like armor. I am earth in mineral form, untouchable, unownable.
The bass keeps me alive. The drum keeps me moving. When that rhythm hits, my body testifies without shame. The beat reminds me: I am survival set to music.
Take off all your chains. Take off all their names. Take off all the weight they stacked on you. We getting free. We burning. We root.
The Initiation
Pages 3–4 • Root Wounds, Root Fire
The Initiation
They told us the body was theirs.
We call it The State’s Hand on the Womb.
They told us the body was safe in their arms.
We call it Eyes that patrol, never protect.
They told us the body was for display.
We call it The War on Flesh.
They told us cloth was vanity.
We call it Cloth as Armor.
And when we forget, the bones scream.
We call it The Drum in the Bones.
We are not stats. We are not headlines. We are not a body count. We are fire. We are bone. And our flesh still speaks.
Receipts • 2025
Abortion BansAs of late 2024, 12 states enforce total abortion bans. The wound is ownership written into policy.
Police KillingsIn 2024, U.S. police killed 1,365 people. The body remains a target, then a headline.
Body PressureDiet and fitness content continues to amplify unrealistic beauty ideals, rewarding surveillance of flesh.
Dress CodesBlack, female, and LGBTQ+ students are disciplined disproportionately under body-policing rules.
Black AugustA month of remembrance, prison abolition study, and ancestral resistance still beating through the bones.
Pages 5–6 • Visual Testimonies
Three Altar Images
Surreal, sculptural, metallic-organic renderings. Sacred statue logic. Each image holds one root truth.
Cloth as Armor
Structured silhouette, glowing seams, tailored resistance. Caption: Armor stitched in rebellion.
The Drum in the Bones
Multiple Black silhouettes, ribcages lit like instruments, collective heat in the horizon. Caption: The drum still beats in me.
Submissions open for Issue 2. Artists testify through image, object, and myth.
The Testament
Pages 7–8 • Psalm + Evidence
The Testament
Authoritarian ≠ Impulsive
They call it a mistake.
A moment.
An impulse.
A single bad choice.
But impulse is spilling milk.
Impulse is anger followed by apology.
This is not impulse.
This is structure.
This is design.
This is law rehearsed in the mirror.
The state does not tremble.
It calculates.
It kills with paperwork.
It cages with budgets.
It suffocates with silence.
And then it whispers: accident.
No.
This is authoritarian.
This is the system performing exactly as written.
Suck of the Teeth • Evidence
“The officer said he fired by mistake — thinking the victim had a gun.”
“Legislators call it ‘saving life,’ even as bans force rape survivors to give birth.”
“He called the killing a split-second impulse, yet autopsy shows repeated bullets fired.”
“State bans redefined abortion as homicide, shifting penalties onto patients themselves.”
Page 9 • CLP.BK Panel
Who Owns the Black Body?
State? Market? Church? Family? Platform? No one at all? This chapter functions like a public margin note inside the issue.
Prompt: Who owns the Black body? Write as confession, witness, argument, warning, or refusal.CLP.BK • Prompt
Page 10 • Anonymous Voices
CLP.BK Responses
“The state thinks it owns consequence. The church thinks it owns shame. The market thinks it owns image. But none of them can carry pain the way the body carries it.”Anonymous • Miami
“My body was discussed before it was heard. Named before it was known. Desired before it was protected.”Anonymous • Atlanta
“No one owns the Black body. That is why they keep trying to inventory it.”Anonymous • New York
ECHO of the Month
Page 11 • Viral Moment
The War on Flesh
The algorithm judges the body by speed. By silhouette. By before-and-after fantasy. By the illusion that flesh becomes worthy only when corrected.
One week the internet demands thinness. The next week it performs neutrality. But both are still forms of surveillance if the body is never allowed to exist without being translated into trend.
In this issue, the viral body is not content. It is evidence. It is witness. It is a site of pressure and refusal.
Page 12 • CZETTA Offerings
Objects for Survival
Ancestral Band
Earth-toned sigil band. Worn like a portable vow to lineage, witness, and remaining here.
Tailored Sash
Cloth as armor. A strip of structure across the body, carrying the memory of both tailoring and defense.
Clay + Gold Pigment
Body as altar. Surface as archive. Survival marked in earth and metallic witness.
Create an ECHO
Page 13 • Spotlighted Creator
I Am Earth’s Witness
Photographed against a red clay wall, the creator stands still enough to refuse performance. The portrait is not asking for approval. It is asking whether witness can exist without ownership.
This page is where the issue hands the language back to the maker. No spectacle. No extraction. Just image, stance, material, and declaration.
Caption: I am not owned. I am earth’s witness.
Page 14 • Final CLP.BK Chant
We are not property.
We are not public.
We are earth.
We are bone.
We are here.
We are ours.