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I want a president


"I want a president" is a poem written by artist Zoe Leonard in 1992.

Zoe Leonard is a New York City-based artist, feminist, and activist. Outside of "I want a president", Leonard works primarily in photography and sculptures, often designed for the particular installation site. Much of her work is influenced by or a response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and associated politics.

"I want a president" was inspired by the announcement by Leonard's friend, Eileen Myles, a poet and activist who announced that she was entering the 1992 race for president of the United States as an "openly female" candidate. Myles ran as an independent against George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot. Myles's identity stood in contrast to her wealthy male opponents; she is a gay woman, and comes from a community directly affected by both poverty and AIDS.

Leonard expresses the desire to see a more diverse range of elected officials, with struggles and experiences that most representatives today do not possess and have never had to contend with. The poem opens with the sentence, "I want a dyke for president", and continues with a series of "I want..." statements describing the kinds of people she would like to see as president.

Written in the early 1990s, "I want a president" has roots in Leonard's other work, including critiquing the political inaction of the AIDS epidemic, and from amidst a wave of anti-"political correctness" discourse.

I want a dyke for president. I want a person
with aids for president and I want a fag for
vice president and I want someone with no
health insurance and I want someone who grew
up in a place where the earth is so saturated
with toxic waste that they didn't have a
choice about getting leukemia.

The poem was first set to be published in a LGBT magazine that then ceased publication. The document was instead photocopied and distributed. Vice described it as "something like a pre-internet meme -- something shared, copied, and re-interpreted starting way before most Americans had internet connections at home." In 2006 the art collective LTTR produced postcard versions, including them in the fifth annual art journal.


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