Gramma, Seattle’s new poetry press, published a pretty incredible collaborative poem this morning called “Election Day.” Read it.
Portland poet Lillian Ruth Nickerson edited and arranged the verses from the twenty-six contributing poets, all of them women except for Stranger Genius in Literature, Maged Zaher. Seattle poets who contributed to the piece include Frances Chiem, Amber Nelson, Michelle Peñaloza, and The Stranger‘s Kim Selling.
Each line of the poem begins with the phrase “I grab myself by the pussy and,” a rhetorical gesture that reclaims Donald Trump’s infamous instance of rapacious braggadocio.
The poem is playful, powerful, and fun to read, as these lines attest:
I grab myself by the pussy and feel fine, actually
I grab myself by the pussy and I speak blunted words to the world
I grab myself by the pussy and decide I don’t have to explain shit
I grab myself by the pussy and conjure all the women alienated by pussy labor
I grab myself by the pussy and I am a diamond mine that is one giant diamond that cannot be mined without being chiseled into smaller stones so we leave me
This little chunk of lines represents one of several moments where the poem is firing on all cylinders. Each line works with the others to push forward a single logic, embodying the process of democratic choice. In this section, the lines criticize the exploitation of women’s labor. It’s not—and shouldn’t be—a woman’s job to bear the burden of explaining shit to men who don’t understand why something they said or did was sexist. Women are not the teachers of men or in any other way a means to end, but rather diamond mines that are one giant diamond, which is to say an end in themselves.
I think it’s also important to note the moments of disjuncture in the poem, the lines that trouble the syntax of the sentence or blaze their own trail. These are of equal in importance to the ones that cohere into an argument because they speak to the form’s largesse. Apparent paradoxes and seemingly disparate dictions make a poem stronger, more interesting, more powerful. Poems are bigly enough to contain many and sometimes contradictory ideas without falling apart. Let’s hope our democracy is, too.
