First 100 Days: Power by Adrienne Rich

By Tarra Stevenson

Living in a white fog of patriarchy/phallocentrism/misogyny

Today a class of teenage girls
radiant
discussed the power
of Marie Curie
her sacrifice to birth knowledge
even in the face of her own death. A radio-
active superwoman.

Today a vice-president eliminated
possibility
potential
denying their rights
denying her fights

and the teenage girls understand this
toxicity.

But they are tired
of sacrificing,
of seeing
(ElizabethWarrenMaxineWatersHillaryClintonHenriettaLacksZeldaFitzgeraldMarinaAbramovicMothersSistersDaughtersJaneDoeUnnamed)
themselves
Sacrificed.

They refuse this half-life.

Tarra Stevenson teaches at an all-girls school, where she is an agitator, educator and feminist. She has fiction in Shirley Magazine and poetry in Vinyl Poetry and Prose. She earned her BA from UC Davis, her MA from Loyola Marymount University, and is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction from UC Riverside’s low-residency program.

Photo credit: Loran via a Creative Commons license.