17 things
This is a revised version of a poem originally posted on October 11, 2016. Spoken word version can be found here.
Seventeen things you have to learn for yourself
as a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual
or otherwise Queer youth
by the time you are seventeen.
One is that the first Pride was a riot
I don’t mean that it was full of laughter, or that it was some grand party
where everyone spiraled up to dance among the stars
because the only glittering that night
was broken glass on cobblestones.
The first Pride was a riot
on the backstreets of New York
and they never tell us
that that night
we won.
They never tell us
that it was the only protest
in a decade full of turmoil
where the cops had to hide from the shouting, dancing rioters
who fought to reclaim the only ground they had ever been able to say was theirs.
Stonewall is only an echo of a name in our history
Christopher Street Liberation Day even less
but I swear to you
the first thing you need to know is
the first Pride was a riot,
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