Cross-posted with permission from Stanford student publication, Static.

Queer Rage by Janani Balasubramanian, ’12, Alok Vaid-Menon, ’13, and Cam Awkward-Rich, graduate student in Modern Thought & Literature

This poem, “Marriage”, also known as “Queer Rage”, is a critique of gay marriage politics as a strategy of liberation. Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage (or anyone else’s) is not where the struggle ends, or even begins, really. In the piece we call for a consideration of race, class, and other systems of control that complicate and intersect with queerness. We also point to the increasing corporatization and overwhelming whiteness of gay marriage politics. Overall, we point to a more critical consideration of violence and material oppression that is linked to queerness, and how insufficient marriage equality is in this regard. This piece was performed by the Stanford Slam Poetry team at the 2012 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. Video and transcript below.

There’s no place like homo

There’s no place like homo

somewhere over the rainbow

way up high

there’s a land that I heard of

once in a lullaby

Wake up honi

it’s called san francisco

where white bourgie bitches getting gay married

but my ass ain’t got an invite sha hoo~

Somewhere over the rainbow

Blue birds fly.

Birds fly over the rainbow.

Why then, oh why can’t I?

BECAUSE YOU’RE BROWN HONEY GURL

I’m bout to sassy gay friend this ish ~

Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you

Rainbows are just refracted beams of white light,

Gay marriage activism is a temper tantrum:

Mommy I’m going to buy an “I’m a second class citizen” American Apparel v-neck to go with my corporate internship and some ass

I didn’t always think this way

Cuz philadelphia taught me everything i still know about shame

that my queer body was something to “correct”

that looking like “a faggot with a cunt” only meant

I was looking for trouble

So in high school I laced my shoes with rainbows

and preached the gospel of equal rights and pride

That tell us marriage will finally untangle

our love from shame, will legislate us wholly human

But the day same sex marriage was legalized in New York, DC, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa it didn’t get better because “Somewhere over the rainbow” there’s a pot of Goldman Sachs

**DUN DUN DUN DUN**We are gathered here today**

for richer, for poorer

tell that to El’Jai who lost his job last year

His state is one of only 12

where you cannot legally be fired

for having a body that doesn’t sit right with your heart

but his job “could only be done by a man”

and his genitals did not conform to his employers expectations.

[I do not know if he won the court case, only that he has a son,

and that being brown and trans means being 4 times less likely to find work]

but who needs money for bread when you can eat wedding cake!

in good times and in bad

tell that to Temmie Breslauer a transwoman who was arrested for using

her father’s discount subway card.

the NYPD chained her to a wall for 28 hours and called her a he-she

to have and to be held

this is what marriage means for queer people

as we send the government wedding invitations to incarcerate our love

till death do us part,

tell that to asher brown who at thirteen took a gun to his head

as if it was an act of patriotism because in texas

being gay is a death sentence

it is nights spent whispering secrets to open skies

it is the sound of your mother crying because she wonders

how that thing came out of her

and i do, i do, i do

not believe that a marriage certificate

could have stopped the bullet

Remember,

Remember,

Remember,

There is something beautiful about being lied to:

Rainbows are just a trick of light,

They make us forget the storm is still happening,

When walking towards the end of the rainbow, it will always move away.

Cam, Janani, and Alok are all members of the Stanford Spoken Word Collective.