Thank you. I wrote this a week ago and I was … afraid to post it. For that long. I like it. I like this poem. I like my voice in it. And I like the realness of it.

There is not “one way” to poet but when we call out the power structure within anything, we are accused of saying this is poetry this is not — when all I wanted to do was to scream omg this stuff is everywhere and it is all the same and it is all we are told is “real poetry” and why can’t we scream about it calmly because we know that women poet and people of color poet and lesbians poet and gay men poet and we know that woke people poet and we know that poetry is not one thing — — so when I wrote this to say that ….I felt ….hesitant because whenever we question the status quo of things as you mentioned, we get so much worse thrown at us and as women and feminists and poets and yeah I am probably fat, LOL, we just cannot afford this ‘worse’ stuff thrown at us because we do not even have our foot in the door or our hand on the knob but we get accused of trying to put people down etc etc — when calling out injustice and oppression and unfairness and highlighting the reality that is ‘white boy poetry’ in MFA programs and at readings and in journals — that is calling for some kind of action to address the issue and make poetry things include more poets.

So, thank you for reading this and making me feel better and good and right and okay for posting it! ❤