Being a lady is difficult. Aside from being buried in the patriarchal shackles from the minute they are conceived, being a lady likewise suggests that our activities are named and quite often utilized as our sole character. Talked word entertainer Savannah Chestnut, in her powerful poem, Hi, I’m a Slut challenges this practice. Brown, in the course of the poem, embraces the term ‘slut’ without its derogatory connotation. With a tone reeking of sarcasm and anger, the artist refuses to be identified as “raw meat” or merely by her “thighs and moans.”

w o r d s / /
hi, i’m a slut. what? you can’t be surprised
when you’ve spent my entire life deciding woman equals sexualize,
in ninth grade a man told me i have good blow job eyes
hi, i’m a slut. but what does that mean
i’m unclean, i’m less pure, i sleep around, sure
but isn’t that what you were begging for?
hi, i’m a slut. and science disagrees
but let’s ignore anatomy and joke that my vagina is wide enough to fit
an entire football team or, even,
your narcissism
but no one’s is big enough for that

you think an orgasm for you is like oxygen for me
like when i am going down on you i’m actually sucking up life
retrieving my very soul from inside your stomach
and an orgasm for me is like—well, maybe. if you have time
and since you can’t see it it probably doesn’t exist anyway
i was probably faking it anyway, women don’t like sex anyway
you’re pretty sure the clitoris is just a myth
so when it comes to my pleasure no one really gives a shit
unless i can come like a man because then i’m a fetish

or if i’m a virgin. that makes me a fetish too
but doesn’t that also mean i’m a prude
everything i do is an invitation for your condemnation
regardless of the angle of the delicate arch in my back
marked down on your scale from zero to loose
and if i had learned anything that didn’t have to do with
how to make my hair fall daintily over my breasts
or how to make my lips softer and more like a graveyard
untouched and where grown men go when they feel dead inside
or how to make my aura more alluring, but not too alluring
that’s something a skank would do
i’d tell you that when two opposing forces meet they cancel
so it sounds to me like you just don’t want me to exist.

i am raw meat in a slaughterhouse
packaged according to what you are hungry for that day
i am identified by my thighs and my moans and my sighs
even though you keep telling me i shouldn’t be making noise in the first place
keep your mouth shut unless i’m the one putting something in it
it’s funny, the ones who cry whore the loudest
are the ones who are thirstiest for my blood

and my love only starts to matter and
stops being make-believe, a fantasy when you’re watching lesbian porn
but they quickly discover that actually
what they’ve been missing this whole time is your cock
you’re looking to “experiment” in the same way i must be “experimenting”
like a science fair where the prize for
equating my entire personhood to your dick
is that you get two women who are disgusted by how your
breath reeks of desperation instead of just one

you’re damn right my body is a temple
i am the god it was built for

i am the landlord
and i can let whoever i want live inside it

hi, i’m a slut and no, that doesn’t mean
i am nothing but flesh to grab
with your red stained hands
that you’ve sterilized with excuses in case i shout
so when i do you can tell everyone that
hi, i’m a slut and no
and that doesn’t mean i am nothing
but sweat and blow job eyes
hi, i’m a slut
and no that doesn’t mean i am nothing but the girl who was asking for it
hi, i’m a slut and no,
and that doesn’t mean i am nothing