Every election cycle runs on the same currency — promises of who deserves to be protected and who doesn’t. In Texas, that calculus has never been subtle. The sacrificial communities have always been BIPOC families, low-income Texans, undocumented people, queer and trans Texans, and young people are told, cycle after cycle, that their turn is coming. It never does. Everything is extracted from them and they are the last to be seen or heard.
In poetry slams, the person who pays the highest price — who goes first, whose score doesn’t count, who exists only to calibrate everyone else — is the sacrificial poet, the “sac.” In front of five judges scoring from zero to ten, they are literally what every other poem is measured up against to decide who goes home with the cash prize.
Last month, Fund Texas Choice partnered with poets, open mics, and bookstores around the U.S., while touring across Texas for our Poetic Justice for Abortion Access Fund-a-Thon campaign.
Every week, we showcased poets from Texas, California, and New York to inspire action and highlight the interconnectedness of reproductive justice, immigrant rights, trans liberation, and bodily autonomy. Bookstores and open mics across Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio opened their doors, set up chairs, hooked up mics and cameras, and hit play on the livestream — creating the spaces for us to fill with language and action, with abortion access literally within reach, and with proof that there are countless things all of us can do to keep it that way.
On our final stop, one of our team members performed as the sacrificial poet. In a poem written in response to the passing of SB8, she delivered an indictment — speaking as a mother, as a poet, as a Black queer Texan — on every harm and contradiction, every death and injustice the legislation outlined as a blueprint for the rest of the country to follow. Reflecting on her fears for her daughter’s future, she closed with an invitation for the audience to create a blueprint of their own:
“I don’t know what to say when she asks what we were doing while human rights violations were given more protection than the body she calls her own, more than her own life. I think of what I hope I can tell her we did. And I hope that we do just that.”
When poets compete in a slam, they know what poems they’re going to do, what will land well with the audience, and score high with the judges. But that night, poet after poet pivoted away from their plan to rewrite a blueprint of their own. They performed poems about abortion, gender-based violence, immigration, and the carceral state. About motherhood, about boyhood, about grief, loss, and survival. Their poems were connected because all oppression is connected, but so too is our liberation.
That night was the finale of a month filled with over 100 poets across the country living and breathing Audre Lorde’s words:
“… poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”
— Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984.”
We know in the South, elections are rigged with every form of voter suppression. But there is a statistical inevitability that no amount of harmful legislation, no zealous enforcement, no coordinated suppression will ever be able to outrun: the majority of people in this country support abortion access, and no law changes that.
The majority is on our side. Lawmakers know it. Anti-abortion extremists know it. That is exactly why they fight like hell to keep us from doing anything about it. But they forget that the sac sets the tone. We go first, we speak the truth, and every poem — every law, every fight, every win — that comes after gets measured against what we said. We are not powered by promises. We are powered by people. And we cannot be silenced.
Thank you to every poet who brought their truth, their community, and their voice to this campaign. We are honored to have been in this fight alongside you.
| Texas Poets WOMXN GOD + Own Ebony Stewart, Houston S.B. No. 8: ERASURE KB Brookins, Fort Worth Again Jasminne Mendez, Houston CONJUNCTIONS after Crystal Tennille Irby LeChell Rush, Houston And the Doctor Says Rubi Morgan, Houston | California Poets untitled Alyesha Wise, Los Angeles Silenced by design Royce Talaga, Riverside Birthright Feturi Talaga, Los Angeles Small Pinches Tomi Simmons, Huntington Beach Aquaphobia Nikki Avila, San Diego | New York Poets INTERGENERATIONAL CHOICES + TO MY CO-WORKERS WHO SAID I AM INCOMPLETE WITHOUT A BABY Yesenia Montilla, New York our bodies belong Roya Marsh, Bronx vientre viejo Sheila Maldonado, New York NY A Brief History of Hangers Stephen Mills, New York Liability Ketayma Stewart, Brooklyn |
Thank you to the partners and venues that opened their doors and held the room:
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