Sunday's poem: June Jordan's Poem about My Rights

"And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

June Jordan 

June Jordan's powerful "Poem about My Rights" is a poem of profound anger and defiance directed at the sexual assault and exploitation of women, racial hatred and discrimination and the gender and political forces that make such violence possible.

A clip of June Jordan reading the poem is here. 

June Jordan's website is here.

An earlier blog post on June Jordan is here.  

Poem about My Rights

by June Jordan

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 if 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   

which is exactly like South Africa   

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that   

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that         

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems   

turn out to be   

me

I am the history of rape   

I am the history of the rejection of who I am   

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of   

myself   

I am the history of battery assault and limitless   

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind   

and my body and my soul and   

whether it’s about walking out at night   

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or   

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or   

the sanctity of my national boundaries   

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity   

of each and every desire   

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic   

and indisputably single and singular heart   

I have been raped   

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age   

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the   

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic   

the wrong sartorial I   

I have been the meaning of rape   

I have been the problem everyone seeks to   

eliminate by forced   

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/   

but let this be unmistakable this poem   

is not consent I do not consent   

to my mother to my father to the teachers to   

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy   

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon   

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in   

cars   

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own   

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance   

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination   

may very well cost you your life

June Jordan, “Poem About My Rights” from The Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005) . Copyright © 2005 by The June M. Jordan Literary Trust. www.junejordan.com.