By Marge Piercy
There is no difference between being raped
And being pushed down a flight of cement steps
Except that the wounds also bleed inside.
There is no difference between being raped
And being run over by a truck
Except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it.
There is no difference between being raped
And being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake
Except that people ask if your skirt was short
And why you were out anyhow.
There is no difference between being raped
And going head first through a windshield
Except that afterward you are afraid not of cars,
But half the human race.
The rapist is your boyfriend’s brother.
He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn.
Rape fattens on the fantasies of the “normal” male
Like a maggot in garbage.
Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing
All of the time on a woman’s hunched back.
Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pine woods,
Never to climb a trail across a bald
Without that aluminum in the mouth
When I see a man climbing toward me.
Never to open the door to a knock
Without that razor just grazing the throat.
The fear of the dark side of the hedges,
The back seat of the car, the empty house
Rattling keys like a snake’s warning
The fear of the smiling man
in whose pocket is a knife.
The fear of the serious man
In whose fist is locked with hatred.
All it takes to cast a rapist is seeing your body
As jackhammer, as blowtorch, as machine gun.
All it takes is hating that body
Your own, your self, your muscle that softens to flab.
All it takes is to push what you hate,
What you fear onto the soft alien flesh.
To bucket out invincible as a tank
Armoured with treads without senses
To possess and punish in one act,
To rip up pleasure, to murder those who dare
Live in the leafy flesh open to love. The fear of the smiling man
In whose pocket is a knife.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Rape Joke
By Patricia Lockwood
The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.
The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.
The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.
Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”
No offense.
The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.
Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.
The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.
The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.
Not you!
The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.
He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.
The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.
How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.
The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.
The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.
OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.
Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.
The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.
The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.
It gets funnier.
The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.
The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!
The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.
The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.
The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.
The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.
The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.
Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.
You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.
The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.
The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.
It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.
The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.
The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.
The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.
The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.
The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.
The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.
Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.
Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.
The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.
The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.
The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.
Admit it.
Previously published in The Awl, 7/25/13
The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.
The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.
The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.
Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”
No offense.
The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.
Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.
The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.
The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.
Not you!
The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.
He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.
The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.
How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.
The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.
The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.
OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.
Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.
The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.
The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.
It gets funnier.
The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.
The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!
The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.
The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.
The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.
The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.
The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.
Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.
You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.
The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.
The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.
It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.
The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.
The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.
The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.
The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.
The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.
The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.
Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.
Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.
The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.
The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.
The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.
Admit it.
Previously published in The Awl, 7/25/13
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Practicing the Complex Yes
When you disagree with a friend,
a stranger, or a foe, how do you
reply but not say simply No?
For No can stop the conversation
or turn it into argument or worse—
the conversation that must go on,
as a river must, a friendship, a troubled nation.
So may we practice the repertoire
of complex yes:
Yes, I know you feel that way, and...
Yes, and in what you say I see...
Yes, oh yes, and at the same time...
Yes, I see, and what if...?
Yes, I hear you, and how...?
Yes, and there’s an old story...
Yes, and as the old song goes...
Yes, and as a child once told me...
Yes. Tell me more. I want to understand...
And then I want to tell you how it is for me...
a stranger, or a foe, how do you
reply but not say simply No?
For No can stop the conversation
or turn it into argument or worse—
the conversation that must go on,
as a river must, a friendship, a troubled nation.
So may we practice the repertoire
of complex yes:
Yes, I know you feel that way, and...
Yes, and in what you say I see...
Yes, oh yes, and at the same time...
Yes, I see, and what if...?
Yes, I hear you, and how...?
Yes, and there’s an old story...
Yes, and as the old song goes...
Yes, and as a child once told me...
Yes. Tell me more. I want to understand...
And then I want to tell you how it is for me...
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
List of “Don’t Forgets” and “Remembers”
In a New York classroom one year after 9-11, students composed the following 9-11 poem. A relative of the teacher had perished on that day in Tower One of the World Trade Center.
We were eight.
Before September 11th, we would wake up with a list of “Don’t Forgets”
Don’t forget to wash your face
Don’t forget to brush your teeth
Don’t forget to do your homework
Don’t forget to wear your jacket
Don’t forget to clean your room
Don’t forget to take a bath
After September 11th, we wake up with a list of “Remembers”
Remember to greet the sun each morning
Remember to enjoy every meal
Remember to thank your parents for their hard work
Remember to honor those who keep you safe
Remember to value each person you meet
Remember to respect other’s beliefs
Now we are nine.
We were eight.
Before September 11th, we would wake up with a list of “Don’t Forgets”
Don’t forget to wash your face
Don’t forget to brush your teeth
Don’t forget to do your homework
Don’t forget to wear your jacket
Don’t forget to clean your room
Don’t forget to take a bath
After September 11th, we wake up with a list of “Remembers”
Remember to greet the sun each morning
Remember to enjoy every meal
Remember to thank your parents for their hard work
Remember to honor those who keep you safe
Remember to value each person you meet
Remember to respect other’s beliefs
Now we are nine.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Why I Stand
By Andrew Freborg
I stand to honor the promise the flag represents.
You kneel because that promise has been broken.
I stand to affirm my belief that all are created equal, and to fight alongside you for that promise.
You kneel because too few stand with you.
I stand because we can be better.
You kneel to remind us to be better.
I stand to honor all that have fought and died so that we may be free.
You kneel because not all of us are.
I stand because I can.
You kneel for those who can't.
I stand to defend your right to kneel.
You kneel to defend my right to stand.
I stand because I love this country.
You kneel because you love it too.
I stand to honor the promise the flag represents.
You kneel because that promise has been broken.
I stand to affirm my belief that all are created equal, and to fight alongside you for that promise.
You kneel because too few stand with you.
I stand because we can be better.
You kneel to remind us to be better.
I stand to honor all that have fought and died so that we may be free.
You kneel because not all of us are.
I stand because I can.
You kneel for those who can't.
I stand to defend your right to kneel.
You kneel to defend my right to stand.
I stand because I love this country.
You kneel because you love it too.
Sunday, September 2, 2018
Tower
By Kirsty Niven
I cobbled together this tower
with my own calloused hands.
Foraging each component,
the smooth pebbles of beaches,
skimmed away on childhood holidays,
hopping across the salty surface.
The roughly hewn lumps
of a collapsed crofter’s cottage,
scraping my peeling fingers.
Gathering, a bird with its nest.
Taking a bit of this, a bit of that –
the hairs I’ve torn out worrying,
the sticky cement tears,
the drowned wood of the wreckage.
I cobbled together my tower.
Stronger and stronger it grew,
with every new material.
Each mistake a lesson.
You huffed and puffed,
but it will not tumble, it will not crumble.
Bring on your bulldozers, your rage,
Bring on your wrecking balls.
Bring on your explosives.
It’s made of a substance
you will never have, never know.
I built this tower with my own strength.
Kirsty is from Dundee, Scotland where she lives with her husband and cats. Her poetry has appeared in a number of places including The Dawntreader, Dundee Writes, Cicada Magazine and Laldy.
I cobbled together this tower
with my own calloused hands.
Foraging each component,
the smooth pebbles of beaches,
skimmed away on childhood holidays,
hopping across the salty surface.
The roughly hewn lumps
of a collapsed crofter’s cottage,
scraping my peeling fingers.
Gathering, a bird with its nest.
Taking a bit of this, a bit of that –
the hairs I’ve torn out worrying,
the sticky cement tears,
the drowned wood of the wreckage.
I cobbled together my tower.
Stronger and stronger it grew,
with every new material.
Each mistake a lesson.
You huffed and puffed,
but it will not tumble, it will not crumble.
Bring on your bulldozers, your rage,
Bring on your wrecking balls.
Bring on your explosives.
It’s made of a substance
you will never have, never know.
Kirsty is from Dundee, Scotland where she lives with her husband and cats. Her poetry has appeared in a number of places including The Dawntreader, Dundee Writes, Cicada Magazine and Laldy.
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