One of My Absolute Favorite Poems.

If you’ve never heard of June Jordan and you’re either a writer, a woman or a person of color, then you should be slapped. Hard. In the face.

No, wait. I don’t mean that, its just my passion talking.

In all seriousness, when I first read “A Poem About My Rights” by June Jordan, it was only an excerpt in one of my identity politics classes but it inspired me to dig, dig, dig till I found it. Here is the excerpt that I first read and I hope you feel so inspired to hunt down the rest:

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem
about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body
posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the
evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being
that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the
wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the
city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there
by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the
world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and
I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to
be
alone because I can't do what I want to do with my own
body and
who
in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy
penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after
stabbing him after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after
smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies
fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally
you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong
again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am

Okay don’t hunt, find it here.