Gammons

 I talk back.

That’s my flaw—
not silence, not shame,
but speech.
I talk back
to the gammons.

Gammons:
pink-skinned and puffed-up,
faces like cured meat,
red with a rage they can’t name,
so they point it like a shotgun
at anyone not like them—
queer, brown, disabled,
wrong.

They say:
“The gays are everywhere.”
(Yes, we are. You’re welcome.)
They say:
“The immigrants are taking the jobs.”
(What jobs? The ones you won’t do?
The ones you never trained for,
never applied for,
never wanted until someone else had them?)

A man with one tooth
thinks he's been cheated
out of dentistry.
A man with no empathy
thinks he’s been cheated
out of the NHS
while an immigrant
puts on gloves,
saves a life,
writes prescriptions in perfect English
you’ll never read.

They say:
“Pride is every month now.”
Yes.
It is.
Because survival deserves
a parade.
Because existing in colour
while you sulk in beige
doesn’t erase you.

Gammons.
They know nothing
but the heat in their necks
when a trans woman
walks past.
Not the men—never the men—
just the women.
The daring ones.
The ones who demand
to live without apology.
The ones who ask
for rights,
not permission.

They say:
“Women’s spaces must be protected.”
But only from women
they don’t understand.
They do nothing
when their mate—
the one later jailed for touching children—
wolf-whistles schoolgirls
from his van.

They protect nothing.
They defend no one.
They weaponise the word woman
while we build spaces
for all of us.

I am my flaws.
I am defiant.
I am queer.
I am disabled.
I am furious.
I am here.

Gammons rot in their rage.
I speak.
I bloom.
I belong.