No Oasis For Victims
Left naked in the
desert
with a song in my
head.
A cactus the only way
to pierce my heart.
Repression is the sand
around my feet,
after awhile it stops
burning.
Who knows where I’d be
if he hadn’t dropped
me here
like a parcel for
someone else.
I never thought I’d be
his problem,
a catalyst of violence
and voodoo dolls.
He holds a pin for
every day
and on Saturday
there’s extra.
Bits of hair, skin,
drawn on eyes,
a serious doll, my
mouth a straight line.
The stuffing comes
out, he pushes it back.
On Sundays, when he
goes to church
with his family in the
air conditioning,
does he think of my
naked body burning,
my dry mouth, the hurt
between my legs
as he strokes his
daughter’s blonde hair?
(this poem was
originally published in Red Savina Review)
(this poem also appears
in Sarah Lilius's new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Thirsty Bones",
available here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522718674/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_2)
*
[
] Culture
Behaviors
commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape,
denial of widespread rape, or refusing to acknowledge the harm of some forms of
sexual violence.*
Rape, you are an
animal.
The media gives you
cookies,
you’ve grown fat,
snarling from the cave.
I open my eyes to your
terror.
Your world has been
created.
We need to cut the
power to your brightness,
lights flicker, this
lightning is not fireflies
wild against dark sky,
waiting for palms to cup.
We need more sound. To
open our chests, display
lungs and let out the
words.
Women, your screams,
even muffled,
weren’t silent. They
grow inside, canyons of dirty sound.
Victims drive to
therapy,
they lose sleep, they
harbor PTSD,
they hush as rose
petals
that fall from the
flower.
They are statistics silent on a page,
the ant crawls up your
leg,
slap and he’s dead,
silenced for existing.
1
out of every 6 American women: has been the victim of an attempted or completed
rape in her lifetime.**
I am 1 out of 6
American women.
Teenager. He exists.
Has children.
He probably doesn’t
seem the monster
that has broken the
way silence
arcs inside me.
Not many know this of
me.
I open my mouth to
speak the words,
it blooms like bloody
heads crowning,
it’s a release, my
face hot and shamed.
The words, stone birds
sitting on a wire,
unable to make bleak
sounds
of warning.
My silence, the place
I hide, overgrown
with weeds, they smell
fresh,
shaking their seeds
from green heads.
Now it’s laid out like
a snake suddenly
on a table, I want to
cut off the head,
feed it to my rapist
in the dark.
And when he screams NO,
maybe I’ll take it out
or maybe
I’ll make him eat it
with open eyes.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture#cite_note-3
**http://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims
(this poem was
originally published in Thank You For Swallowing)
(this poem also appears
in Sarah Lilius's new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Thirsty Bones",
available here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522718674/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_2)
*
*
13.
What the Dark
Brings Me
When
I ask,
the
dark
offers
me its
gifts.
A
tree of eyes. A
hand
in a jar,
its
owner, lost.
I
swallowed a
wedding
ring,
once.
It
tasted like
dust
and tears.
Bone
and gold.
(Source:
Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New
York: Mysterious Press, 1987. Print.)
~Sarah Nichols~
*
12.
The Patron Saint
of Dead Women
I
heard the reporters lying
to
my mother.
I
hear everything now.
Death
is too loud.
They
told her
I’d
won a
beauty
contest.
A beauty contest
!
Don’t
they know
that
I’m the patron
saint
of
dead
women
everywhere
?
I
watch over them now.
Waiting
by the phone.
(Source:
Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New
York: Mysterious Press, 1987. Print.)
~Sarah Nichols~
*
11.
Columbus
Columbus
Our
lesson for today: Columbus
was
not a nice man. He chopped off hands
that
came to him empty of gold. You children
could
make better discoveries than him
without
his brazen ships and brute force.
Your
brains are able to build new trade routes
between
left and right hemispheres. You
can
harvest cane and make something new,
beyond
stupefying sugar and rum. You’re
the
generation that finds a way to produce energy
from
candy wrappers and lunar tides!
So
why do you sit there staring at us
like
a pause button? Like fools,
offering
iron pyrite? It breaks our hearts
to
tell you it’s just not gold. To watch you lose
your
fingers, joint by joint.
~Susanna Kittredge~
*
10.
*
10.
Ctrl
I
press the power button and thumb the analogue sticks,
I want to play war today.
Thirty
seconds to choose a weapon,
I
pick the VMP, a sub-machine gun
used
for close range—
blood
pixels are starting to look real these days.
***
I
imagine the bone vaporizing
from
the bullets I shred into a leg.
***
The
game goes on without me, other players
killing
other players. I stand over a body
breaking
the right trigger on the controller
putting
everything I have into some idiot’s dead body,
It
doesn’t move anymore, but
the
red pixels still…
~Peter Braddock~
*
9.
Windex
Sitting in front of the T.V.
my body transforms into
a mouse.
I scurry around the floor looking for food,
when a foot catches the end of my tail.
Mother stands over me with a clear china glass,
the ones kept locked away and never used,
and a bottle of
Windex.
The glass comes down trapping me inside,
the edge tilts,
and a mist of Windex fogs the glass,
she watches,
waiting for me to die.
8.
The Sickness
Sometimes
I want to lie down
on
the track
let
the train roll
over
my center
and
cut me right
in
half
so
I can give it up
to
God
or
the
devil
whoever
gets here
first
I
desire the stigmata
a
label
a
sign
something
to show I’ve been
I’ve
done
more
than flesh
more
than time
I
understand the cutters
who
carve those perfectly
straight
lines
along
an arm
or
leg
maybe
discreetly under the foot
I
should cut
and
open the void
blood
it out
release
all the shit
that
has screwed me up over time
let
any residue of
hope
brown
and
dry
onto
scarred
flesh
~Donna Dallas~
*
*
7.
Afterlife in
America
You spat smooth rocks at a sheet of
tin. I wrung a canary's neck. I hummed the Defense of Marriage Act. You pulled
a cowboy hat over your ears. I fixed a miniature radio, from which you heard
Kennedy's faint voice say "cut out its kidneys, mortal fool." You
read The Hobbit. I wandered the flat part of the world. You married a space
between tombs. I pursued the giggling shade of Warren G. Harding. You turned
into pale smoke. For some reason, I became a woman named Magda and forgot all
about the Department of the Interior. You visited Spokane. I wept. Now you live
under a hill. You shave the heads of deserving children. I think of you often
as I destroy these bicycles. The cure for slow Time is fast Amnesia – try some.
It's the only way to keep your balance as the drunk Earth wobbles through Old
Night.
~Matthew F. Amati~
*
~Matthew F. Amati~
*
6.
Endings
The princess was saved. The
spaceship exploded. The map was found, then the treasure was found. The human
and the antelope girl kissed. The henchmen died en masse. You could distinguish the neurosurgeon by her emphatic
breasts. Sidekicks were usually one of the following: dwarf; alien; ethnic
human with attitude/folk wisdom; talking marmoset; talking dog; talking dragon
(miniature); Joe Pesci; talking umbrella; a false God. The Father gave advice.
Then he died. The villain had it all sewn up, until he didn’t. The castle wall
crumbled. The hyperdrive began working again at an opportune moment. The sword
glowed. The eagles took everyone home free of charge. It's over now, and we're
drinking Schnapps and shooting things in a junkyard.
5.
No Other Way
Is
there a voice
as
sharp as a cut nerve,
or
an answer to unravel
this
relentless groove?
Is
there divinity in stagnation
or
purpose to a dead womb?
Can
even a great love withstand
evenings
of always the same
bleak
gestures - a snapped jugular,
a
lost future?
Is
it burning like an enemy in our closet
or
like a miracle denied?
Is
it a triggered revolver in the pit
of
all our youthful promise or a transmuting faith
that
rides this kissless wound?
If
we give this back or give it up will it be
the
bed to hold us, will it nurse our roots
to
flower, or drop us unwanted?
Will
there be rescue from this slumbering void
or
just the iris of our common eye looking, looking back
at
its old and destroyed self?
4.
Overpass
In
the gravel hole
slumbering
in cold fatigue
open
and open is tomorrow
never
arriving. But pale and pasty
sickness
in my mirror is all I see
when
I look at my changing body, changing
again
to form a great wonder.
Weak
as a broken limb, my mind
is
empty of inspiration and I am drifting with this seed
from
day to day waiting for the sting to pass
and
leave only a larger belly and joy
of
what (in time)
will be.
3.
FIREHOUSE CAR
SHOW
The
assemblage of emergency vehicles
Crammed into my grandmothers driveway
Looks like the display at our local firehouse car show,
When the engine companies across our county
Polish their vehicles and put them on parade
In the open lot next to the fire hall.
Every emblem on the ambulances and engines
Gleams in the sun as we spot my great-grandmother’s house
Through the branches of her old cedar tree.
With such an elaborate display of life savers,
We expect to see all of our favorite things—
Crammed into my grandmothers driveway
Looks like the display at our local firehouse car show,
When the engine companies across our county
Polish their vehicles and put them on parade
In the open lot next to the fire hall.
Every emblem on the ambulances and engines
Gleams in the sun as we spot my great-grandmother’s house
Through the branches of her old cedar tree.
With such an elaborate display of life savers,
We expect to see all of our favorite things—
Funnel
cakes, clowns making balloon animals,
Loud speakers blaring carnival music before the band
Loud speakers blaring carnival music before the band
Takes
the stage in the picnic pavilion.
Flashing lights from the Ferris Wheel,
The pulsing neon of the miniature roller coaster,
Coalescing with the flashing bulbs of the carrousel.
There is only screaming—but not the kind
We know by ear from the carnival rides.
It's a new kind of shrieking,
Louder than all the emergency vehicles
Blaring their sirens and honking their horns,
Louder than any sound I've ever heard.
My great-grandmother’s bull horn mouth
Is amplifying that noise as she quivers
Flashing lights from the Ferris Wheel,
The pulsing neon of the miniature roller coaster,
Coalescing with the flashing bulbs of the carrousel.
There is only screaming—but not the kind
We know by ear from the carnival rides.
It's a new kind of shrieking,
Louder than all the emergency vehicles
Blaring their sirens and honking their horns,
Louder than any sound I've ever heard.
My great-grandmother’s bull horn mouth
Is amplifying that noise as she quivers
In
the front yard of her home.
Her
eyes are fixed on a white stretcher
Surrounded
by emergency technicians
Where
her daughter motionlessly rests.
They rush my grandmother into an ambulance
Before any of us are able to reach her body.
They rush my grandmother into an ambulance
Before any of us are able to reach her body.
When
she sees the epicenter of the trauma,
My mother echoes the alarm from the driver’s seat
Of our minivan as she parks near the caution tape.
My sister and I join the emergency cries,
My mother echoes the alarm from the driver’s seat
Of our minivan as she parks near the caution tape.
My sister and I join the emergency cries,
Like
a pair of desperate fire whistles,
Begging
for the mercy of rescuers.
We
are louder than the shrieking ambulance
Siren as it speeds towards the hospital.
Siren as it speeds towards the hospital.
Firefighters
will have to empty
All
the water towers in our town
Just to quench our incineration
~Christian Sammartino~
*
Just to quench our incineration
~Christian Sammartino~
*
2.
TOTALED
The
sputtering jalopy on Commonwealth
Backfires
the engine of my memory
Into
the first gear of grief.
I
reluctantly switch on my hazard lights,
Accelerating
down the boulevard of loss
Into
the pothole pitted lot of her death.
Attempts
to correct my steering wheel
Cause
me to breakdown in the parking
Space
of her absence.
Her
final auto body shop is more
Junkyard
than nursing home.
Hospice
nurses crowd her like mechanics,
Frantically
inspecting a mangled car on a lift
Before
it’s totaled, shipped to the scrap yard.
Oil
drowns the pistons of her heart,
Seizes
the horsepower of her lungs,
Dims
the brightness of her headlights.
Someone
official checks under her hood,
Empties
the fluid leaking into her bedpan,
Injects
her fuel lines full of morphine.
She
splutters and coughs, backfiring like cars
In
the Motor City—she stalls on a highway
Her
roadside assistance can’t reach.
Death
certificates are on the table,
The
wrecker is in transit.
I
call every insurance agent in America—
No
company sells collision insurance capable
Of
preparing me for the impact of this pileup.
Her
lifetime warranty expires and
She
is pronounced unfit for the road.
1.
purple
butterflies
I saw you in a dream
your arms and back printed in rows of purple butterflies
me, nervous fairy
milky bovine mother
pull back from the slightest electricity
soldering anodized titanium
a link to our hands
the grounding lacking
I close my eyes to the world around me
a perfect sonnet in maladaptive fantasies
these places where ancient ruins become
mazes and sideways floors
and the dead walk and come out of secret passageways
I meet reality by screaming at tombstones
floating antique, this drapery passing over dried flowers
remove the history to keep it tidy
sleep to streamline memories continuously re-programmed
mouth wide open
key stitched to my tonsils
effervescent, wake up screaming
the intimate something you can’t even give yourself
meeting you halfway is meeting in dreams
and never in your arms
and you don’t dream
