Did she really just say that?

How spoken-word poetry allowed me to open up about sex

On the spoken word stage, nothing is off limits…

I grew up in a pressure cooker.

That sounds extreme, but I think it accurately describes what it’s like to grow up as a very sexual person in a Muslim family in Tennessee. I didn’t have the language, community, or social permission to ask all the questions I wanted to ask, say the words I wanted to say or voice the feelings I wanted to express. And I’m certainly not the only one. Tennessee students are damaged by years of sexual repression, heteronormativity, an appalling lack of information about, and access to, contraception, not to mention sexual assault by partners, family members or friends.

The question is: as we get older, how do we process the experience of having been gaslighted about our own biology and desires? How do we express our anger at our parents, teachers and government officials, the gatekeepers of vital information about a healthy, natural part of life? Does the pressure cooker eventually explode? The answer is different for everyone. But for myself specifically, the pressure has been lifted by the freedom of spoken-word poetry, an art form that has grown tremendously around the country over the past few years.

When I was in high school, I competed in a national poetry recitation contest in Washington, D.C. Although I was eliminated in the first round, what I learned at the competition would change my life. After checking into the hotel on the first night, many participants gathered in a green area just down the street. These high school poets, one from every state, broke from the anthology poetry of the official competition and recited their original works. This was not poetry meant for the page; this was raw, angry verse with prose-like imagery, but a rap-like cadence. This poetry was not about sunshine and flowers and the eyes of the beloved; this was about race, identity politics and what it meant to be gay in America.

As I stood in the dark and listened to the spoken word, my eyes filling with tears, I began to feel powerful. I began to feel like the things I had experienced — abuse from my father, my struggle to fit in within both Palestinian and American cultures, pressure to have sex with my boyfriend when I did not want to — were larger than me. I felt that I was not alone, that other people had experienced these things too. I immediately wanted to go back to the hotel room and write.

When I entered college, I attended a couple poetry slams on campus, and I gained the confidence to write and perform my own material. As I wrote, I tapped into an anger I did not know I had. The teenage girl who had been vulnerable, weepy and depressed over her condition, suddenly became a confident, outspoken feminist on the page and onstage. Rather than continuing to suffer from internalized sexist ideas about virginity and purity, I used my poetry to protest against the ideas themselves and against the forces that had instilled them in me.

I was shocked at the positive reactions I received. My first decent slam poem, “Pandora’s Box,” is a feminist tirade against virginity:

‘Take, Give.’ ‘Give, Take.’ ‘Lose.’

You lost it?

Where the fuck did you put it?

You know we talk about virginity like it’s a Christmas gift

or a set of fucking car keys.

The audience laughed, snapped and clapped in a way that told me they had been there too, that they needed to hear what I had to say. That we were all healing together.

For a long time, I did not have a stage name, and I envied the clever names of the other poets who took the stage before and after me. It took a long time to establish my identity as a poet; I cover a lot of different topics, and I couldn’t find anything that seemed to encompass all of it. My poetry friends have since dubbed me “Uncensored,” as I am the one who is unafraid to say what everyone else is thinking. It is a fitting name for me, but it is a theme in all of spoken-word poetry. When I write spoken word, I am not limited by meters or end rhyme or rules. There is no off-limits topic. I have gotten onstage and related graphic details of sexual assault at the hands of my past partners. I have talked about lubricant and nipples and pegging. There’s something magical about taking gross, raw, vulnerable experiences and turning them into words and phrases and rhythms. It’s a way of reclaiming our experiences. It’s a way of saying, “This happened to me, and it was ugly, but I am going to make it beautiful.”

“It’s a way of reclaiming our experiences. It’s a way of saying, ‘This happened to me, and it was ugly, but I am going to make it beautiful.’”

In this way, poetry and art are radical. They are a form of action, of activism. As artists, it is our job to take what we know to be true and frame it in a way that mirrors the truths of others. Art gives us all the power to reclaim our own narratives, take charge of our own lives and extend that confidence to others. Slam poetry pushes the boundaries of conversation; it takes old ideas and strings them together in new ways. Spoken word has allowed me to be open in ways that are frowned upon everywhere else, both liberating me and allowing me to build community with others. I believe a poetry slam is one of the safest places to be vulnerable. I feel at home when I hear the snaps from the audience on a line that speaks to them, the cheers of “speak, poet,” even when someone messes up, and the deafening sound of “virrrrrrrrgiiiiiiiiiin!” when a newbie takes the stage. Spoken word is for everyone because everyone has a truth to speak.

So grab a pen, grab a mic, and let your sexy, private, vulgar stories fly!