Politics & Power Quote by Marge Piercy

Piercy’s speaker doesn’t ask for autonomy; she repossesses it. The opening line is tactile and juridical at once: what “enters” the body is treated as a political border, and what becomes “flesh of my flesh” is framed as a matter of consent, not fate. That pivot is the engine of the passage: choice isn’t a lifestyle preference, it’s the condition that makes ethics and politics possible. Remove it and you don’t get neutrality; you get governance by force.

The metaphors are deliberately ugly because the systems she’s indicting are, too. “Cornfield,” “uranium mine,” “calf,” “cow,” “factory” turns the body into extractive property - agriculture, industry, energy, meat. It’s a rap sheet of how power talks when it thinks it’s being practical: bodies as resources, reproduction as production, sex as supply chain. Piercy’s refusal (“I am not…”) is a counter-spell against that language. Repetition works like a barricade.

Then she names the managers: priests and legislators. Not because they’re uniquely villainous, but because they specialize in moral authority and legal authority - the twin tools used to naturalize control. “Do not hold shares in my womb or my mind” is a brilliant corporate insult: if you’re claiming ownership, admit you’re doing business, not shepherding souls.

“If I give it to you, I want it back” widens the lens from abortion to consent broadly, insisting that even chosen intimacy doesn’t dissolve the self. The last line refuses compromise culture. “Non-negotiable” is the vocabulary of labor strikes and civil rights: the body is not a bargaining chip; it’s the stake.