When I Am Told to “Buck Up” to “Fight the Good Fight” to “Pull Up My Boot Straps & Build Bridges” But I Am Not Ready But I Know Damn Well I Should Be Ready So I Try:

Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis
Whoever despises the penis despises the cunt
Whoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child.
– Muriel Rukeyser

America, fuck you.

Let me be specific:

My mother’s white America, fuck you.

& fuck me, too, because I didn’t make
a warrior of myself & disrupt
my mother’s comfort

by reminding her that the President
she helped elect today doesn’t give a shit about her
constitutional right to take pleasure in her sex

that can build a people, & therefore
her President doesn’t care about me
either—the daughter she’s claimed

she’d do anything to protect.
What did I hope to preserve
when I kept my mouth shut

every time my mother spat nasty woman
about the woman who, regardless of everything
else, is representative of what a vagina

is capable of: creating space
for the matriarchy to extend beyond
single-parent homes.

& here I am, as silent
as I have been. I am woman, but I am
white & have always had the power

to position myself as the matriarch
of my own life—Katie,
grab your mother by the pussy.

The long hallway that leads
to your first place of residence.
Show your mother how the pussy

you inherited from her continues to nourish
her country’s citizens each time
it makes a well of itself & invites

those exhausted allies into drink
from the wetness that recycles itself like rain.
Grab your mother by the pussy.

She’s forgotten she has one, now
that menopause has emptied her
of what her motherless childhood
taught her to be ashamed of—

Let me be specific:

My mother is humiliated by the blood
that gave me life. Could give a shit if Trump fucks her
over when he confirms her life-long lesson

that women are nasty, are rented-to-own,
so long as he preserves her privilege,
which she enlists as erasure

to mask her from the causalities
America has made of her
gender & her sex.

According to the polls, 1 in 2 white women
must unlearn the lesson that a pussy is nothing
but a middle-aged woman’s fetid reservoir.

Do not forget how lucky we are
that with age the clit grows
more receptive to pleasure, regardless

of whether your husband
or your president or your savior
gives a shit about you.

If they won’t do it,
fuck yourselves.

I’m talking to you, Mom.
You heard me. Go fuck yourself—make it hurt
so good. Repossess your body.

Let me be specific: Mom,

grab yourself by the pussy. Relearn
the pressure your ridges respond best to,
remember every time the man came first, so quick

your pussy never had a chance to swell its wetness
up into a spring. If you recall, that chafe
lasts days—the idea that a pussy

deems you’re worthless: as long as
you let it. Mount your discomfort

& ride it into a future
where caring about yourself
means casting a vote for people

you’ve never met, & who are in fear
more constantly than you
have ever been. Do better. Do better

now. Your daughter demands this
of you—your daughter who hasn’t until now
had the strength to walk away from you

if you choose again to surrender
to the grating hand that grabs you
like a bitch by the collar of your sex.