The President-Elect Speaks
By Marge Piercy
“You can always go to another
state” to have your abortion
just so long as you’re rich,
have a nanny to watch your
kids, can take off from your
job, have a ride available
or your own car, aren’t
living at home or needing
to hide the procedure. Yes
affluent women could fly
to Puerto Rico while the rest
of us were doing it to ourselves,
dying of back alley butchery,
bleeding to death, left sterile
from botched operations,
yes, we can always just die,
Mr. Trump, and many mothers
will be leaving their children
to be raised by others, many
teenagers will drop out of school,
many women will die alone
in their bloody beds. It will
be just the way you like it
for women who dare to choose.
……………………………………..
Marge Piercy has published nineteen poetry books, most recently Made in Detroit and The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems from Knopf; seventeen novels; a short story collection, The Cost of Lunch, Etc.; four nonfiction books; and a memoir Sleeping With Cats. She has given readings, lectures and workshops in more than five hundred venues here and abroad.
Reading recommendation: The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan.