Keep Your Hands Off My Body

My found poem comes from the article the CNBC article, ‘I’m outraged:’ Women react to Roe v. Wade ruling outside of Supreme Court, which reflects the reactions of women on the June 24^th decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. For people who observed the case from afar, it received national attention as the original ruling on this case had been implemented in 1973 so after decades of controversy, it arose in The Supreme Court once again. This case presided over the bodily autonomy of women regarding their right to terminate or keep a pregnancy which led way to many other cases such as Obergefell v. Hodges and Virginia v. Loving. The Supreme Court, in its 1973 decision, found that liberties had a direct correlation with individual privacy, granting the ability to terminate a pregnancy if required. This was a landmark for the future of the country as many cases cited this case as a precedent with same-sex and interracial marriages. However, in the past year, this case was recently televised as the prospect of its overturning came to light. The decision was ultimately grueling and arduous yet significant as the highest court ruled to overturn the previous precedent and demolish women’s rights to their privacy. This article focuses on the nationwide traction women felt nationwide. This was not only enraging, but it also stripped women from a procedure they may have both needed and desired due to individual circumstances. This is an enraging topic, and I chose this article due to the upsetting aspect that many women and people feel after the ruling. We are surrounded by women as they make up half of our population and in a perspective way, even your mother had the choice to keep you and her children which is now not a choice but an obligation for many. 

In creating this found poem, I was able to graft phrases that struck me the most. In the offensive manner that women are now overlooked and pained, it became clear that my poem need not discuss anything but another reaction and direct criticism of the government. I was able to rearrange these words to make a poem using repetition and words like one another to formulate the depth of the synonyms. Following, this grants power, and it becomes permissive to discuss this violation as well as hope to change. I was able to use the space on my page to give my poem a unique structure. For example, on the far left I placed phrases like “no” and “not” which repeat themselves to represent what freedoms were revoked from women. Later, I indented phrases beginning with “I” and “I’m” to provide a sense of inner dialogue while the rest of the poem flowed as a normal line. Additionally, my spacing was also done in a manner to accentuate meaning and in a certain part, I decide to make separate lines but match the letter “A” with each phrase to signify deeper connectivity of women and use “each other” in between those lines so they could be interpreted by the reader in multiple ways. This was done so each reader could interpret this differently and choose to approach it as the end of all phrases or just one. As I worked on this poem, it brought a different perspective of the tactics at the day mark, but it did reassure me that the country must move in a different direction to solidify equality and justice. “Justice for all” is something that the country has not lived up to and that is the disappointing truth, but the poem was able to spark creativity in a manner that let me mold my hatred into something of hope instead. This formulation is unique to each individual, and hate could form a different meaning and embody different forms from the same work.