#NotOkay

Last week, the #MeToo campaign, started a decade ago as a way to quietly but adamantly show solidarity with people who had been sexually harassed or assaulted, went viral and swept across social media. In this moment in time it became less a statement of individual solidarity and support and more of a statement of scope to everyone and support to everyone and solidarity with everyone. People, women and men alike, vocalized their experiences publicly. People with small and extensive experiences of harassment and assault were given a socially accepted opportunity to speak up where so many of us walk through life silent about these experiences.
When I added my own Me Too online, a friend and former student responded #notokay.

It was a simple statement, but it meant a lot. Many of our experiences go unnoticed or are silently accepted by others. It's time for us to speak up when we see people being jerks to each other, harming each other, harassing each other, assaulting each other, taking rights from each other...

Small and extensive experiences demand both small and extensive responses.

So, men, speak up. And women, speak up. And white people, speak up. And non-white people, speak up. And Christians, speak up. And everyone speak up. We all have the capacity to not be dicks and to say out loud to each other, "You may or may not be a bad person, but what you are doing right now is not okay." This is especially, especially, especially important when it is someone else who is being harmed (though, obviously, stand up for yourself as well).

End serious thoughts and conversations that have been revolving in my head and life this past week, and which led me to the poem below. I'm still writing a poem every day. Some of them are quite good, and I'm already thinking on compiling another book of poetry from them to publish next year. So I won't be publishing all the good ones here, because I don't want to mess up my future publication opportunities.

But this one. This one I had to share.

#NotOkay

Last night in a dream
I got to yell
     FUCK YOU, BILL COSBY!
at Bill Cosby
and others joined in
He slunk away in shame, or fear, or conflict avoidance
And the party organizers turned up the music
to drown us out
But we continued to shout
It was a very cathartic dream

1979

It's been a hard day, and there have been many hard days. I closed this hard day by reading the essay "Poetry is Not a Luxury" by Audre Lorde. And I agreed. Poetry feeds the soul, and allows it to breathe. In the spirit of healing, and growing, and being, I'm going to try and write a poem every day for the rest of the year. I won't share them all; I anticipate most won't be worth sharing. But here is the first.

1979
by Kati Corlew, 10/14/17

"Poetry is not a luxury," she tells me.

     Audre, my current Lorde

     Black. Woman. Lesbian.
     Dead -- the ultimate of intersectionalities, 

     so easy to be dismissed, 

     overlooked, forgotten.

"It is a necessity," she says.
     For women, it is our skeleton structure
     built of our feelings, our experience, our strength.
     It is our path to live, to not dismiss
     to not dismiss ourselves
     to not be dismissed
How many times have I said that the strength of women
     is that we endure?
How many poems have I written, illustrating just that
     with words, with metaphor, with the contours of letters
     and the shape of each line
Thirty-eight years later and I am beginning to wonder
     if maybe I am a woman after all?
If the queerness and fluidity of my gender
     are steps away from poetry
     steps into the rigidity of masculinity,
     buying into the lie of strength
Each new version of myself grown deeper, yet harder
     In search of recognition, of legitimacy
     In search of safety
Because that too is all a lie 
     taught to us by a Patriarchy
     that
     dominates and victimizes the feminine in women
     casts aspersions and violence against the feminine in men
What, exactly, could be so terrifying as to provoke such violent reactions
     If not power?
     The power of women
     of feeling
     of femininity
The power of poetry.
     The power to feel, and to experience
     The power to understand, to truly and fully
     live
And with these powers
     an ability
     a necessity
     to be free
Could it truly be world-changing?
     System-breaking?
     Patriarchy-smashing?
Is it not a metaphor?
     But an actual necessity?
They wrote Female on my birth certificate in 1979
     A clinical observation
     A poem to a future iteration
     of me
It is not a luxury.
     this experience,
     my life,
     it is a necessity.