A Pride Poem

Yesterday was Pride. It was incredibly fun, and I got to wave a humongous trans* flag down our city’s main street. One of my girlfriends and I made out in front of both groups of bigoted protesters. The float also had about five bags of lollipops and condoms; I was able to get one of the bigots with a lollipop in the stomach.

But as much fun as that was, the real fun was reading a poem at the open mic session after the fair. I think that I might have heard someone booing in the crowd, but mostly, I got a great response. Here’s the poem, almost verbatim from what I read.

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I feel trapped
in Saramago’s nightmares.
Am I really the one woman
not perceiving the world
as forever piercing white?

After all,
in a sea of Prideful peers,
how many can name me
one feminist of color?

We take pride in our colors
Or so our flags claim
…but maybe the rainbow’s our symbol
because the prisms of our groups
only make a rainbow with their white light?

And in a sea of Prideful queers,
who is willing to admit
that our liberation movements started,
gained power,
by screwing one another?

Remember:
My black siblings screwed by the suffragettes.
My lesbian sisters by the straight feminists.
My sisters of color by the white feminists.
My Asian brothers by the white gays on Castro street.
My trans* sisters by the cis girls’s womyn born womyn crap,
by the trans* boys appropriating trans* girls’s experiences

— Remember Michigan Womyn with a ‘y’ Festival
and our Day of Rememberance,
when white trans* men mournfully read the names
of poor women of color tens, hundreds, thousands of miles away —

My queer elders, whitewashed and ciswashed right after the Stonewall riots,
because who could handle the modern queer movement
being started by them?
Everyone knows the movement’s spearheaded
by the rich urbanites with too much marriage on their minds.

Yes, let’s show them our might
Show we’ve still got spunk in these queer bones of ours.
But know well the past,
Don’t fear looking at the present,
When you try to shape our future.

Or you’re no ally of ours.
Feminist and ally are identities only earned
by labors of love