Garnet Juniper Nelson
WHEN YOU MEET A TERF
… thank her for her service, like a veteran
(tho you don’t believe in the war). She will have borne
the burden of her body sincerely, despite her insistence
that concession is the bastard child of resistance,
that somehow in insisting she is imprisoned
within a definition she frees herself from the same.
Don’t think about the money concealed
behind her megaphone, her blue check. This girl’s gone
just a bit further than her mother: full circle, in fact.
To her, equality is a bust. Better to enforce
old roles, she thinks, refence the corrals, increase
the collars’ volts to keep the new colts from bolting.
They grow up thinking they have the run
of the desert, whole stretches of sage-ridden
sands upon which to pound out
in broadest strokes the tale of a species
entrusted by nature to exist outside with their elders.
It is of no consequence; they are corralled and tagged,
government vets treat mustangs and cull their hordes
when they grow too numerous. I am to be culled
if or when a definition is enforced
that estimates a woman amounts only
to this or that flower petal, this or that syllable
or zygote. In the end, we will all be confronted
with consequences of our complicity or defiance—
but she will have long since ceased listening
to this or asserted How does womanhood
live in you? to which we all know the answer is obvious:
it was instilled in me by my mother & is imbued
with her spirit & that of her mother, for once
we both were nested within her, larval,
waiting to join our sisters—including the disbelievers,
who will not be convinced. Do not try. This is intrinsic:
I was entrusted by my mother to exist
as she did: with kindness. All other origin stories are duplicitous.
So thank her, leave, & persist, for we will not be corralled
like horses; nor can we ever grow too numerous.
—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
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Garnet Juniper Nelson: “A century after publication, an image of the poem ‘When You Meet a Member of the Ku Klux Klan’ made waves on the internet. It was written by Robert L. Poston, one of the leaders of the Black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association alongside Marcus Garvey, and was originally published in the association’s weekly newspaper. The poem directly advocates for violence against KKK members. I have no qualms with the piece, but it made me curious how a contemporary poem might address issues of liberation involving my own community. So remember, if a man with a suspiciously manicured beard—or anyone else who purports to know it all—asks ‘What is a woman?’ the answer is simple: there are diverse paths to womanhood. I would also note that TERF is itself a contradiction in terms; there is no such thing as uninclusive feminism.” (web)
