Pride Season 2023 by Marie Cartier

Here you come again

            Twenty-three states banning drag, 100 bills being considered

Just when I’m about to make it work without you

F*** you GOP

You look into my eyes and lie those pretty lies

Abortion is settled law

Gay marriage is settled law

And pretty soon I’m wondering how I came to doubt you

            No—really how am I to ever trust you

To ever think you cared about people over profit

The only reach across the aisle you do is the one

that covers my mouth so I can’t speak out

Well-

Here you come again and here I go

These song lyrics are by Dolly Parton who recently said,

 “If I hadn’t been born a girl, I’d have been a drag queen.”

And I agree—I learned what I learned about the kind of woman I wanted to be

from drag queens

Fierce-femme-fire-breathing

Feminist

F*** you all

Yup—if I hadn’t been born a girl …I’d have been a drag queen

So…here you come again

And here I go

To the protest

To the march

            To social media

            To letter writing

            To everything I know how to do because I am sixty-seven

            And have been an activist since I was fifteen

            That’s fifty-years of strategizing,

            Mobilizing, meeting, working, imagining, creating

            To make a space for me and mine

We know how to do this

So- here you come again

And here I go

            Get out of my face

            Because, yeah, we’re here, we’re queer

            We’re not going shopping      

We’re here, we’re queer

Shouting our story

Here we go again

Here we go again

Here we f***ing go again

*

Ain’t no stopping us now

–Marie Cartier

April 10, 2023

With thanks to the QueerWise https://www.queerwise.net/ performance and writing group