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      November 25, 2024Garnet Juniper NelsonWhen 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 #85 – Musicians

      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.”

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