wild-words-and-wounds

[wild-words-and-wounds]

TO THE GUY IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM COMPLAINING ABOUT LISTENING TO ANOTHER RAPE POEM

When people ask me why it took two years of writing poems to write this poem to write the rape poem, I will tell them all about you. How you watch this stage the same way you watch CSI, you already know what’s coming next, it’s just another mangled body, I am just another hit and run, so you take this time to get another drink, I’ll tell them how every story sounds the same when you stop listening, I’ll tell them how nice it must be to be able to walk away, and I’ll tell them how there’s a voice in the back of my head that sounds an awful lot like yours saying, This is just another rape poem. Just another little-girl-lost poem. Just another do-not-touch-me-until-I-ask you-to-touch-me poem.  Just another seven-years-old, sleeping with a Tinkerbell wand on my nightstand and a kitchen knife underneath my pillow because I swore the next time he came into my bedroom uninvited he would come out bleeding poem; and I get it. I know that you are tired of hearing rape poems. I am tired of hearing rape poems, the same way soldiers are tired of hearing their own guns go off, believe me, we all wish the war was over, but friend, you are staring out at a world on fire complaining about how ugly you think the ashes are, The poems are not the problem. We have built cathedrals out of spite and splintered bone, of course they aren’t pretty, nothing holy ever is— Think of Gandhi’s blistered feet, think of that crown made of thorns and the sweat on your mother’s sacred chest as she pushed to get you here, the work is never pretty, but it’s the only way the house gets built;

So I’m sorry that you don’t want to look at my wreckage, but I have carpentry in my mouth. I have a hammer in my hands, you cannot stop me from building, and as long as you’re there, in the back of the room, I am going to be here, voice made from smolder, because this is my story and you cannot take this from me.

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Emily Dickinson in a letter to Elizabeth Holland wr. c. 20 January 1856

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Louise Glück 4/22/43 - 10/13/23

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Accent

I’ve spent more years living without you

than I’d ever spent living with you

and most of what I remember

is stained with the pain you gave

that shaped me

Not just in your leaving

but in the life you did not live well

and your voice had faded from me long ago

I’d often told acquaintances

that you’d grown up in New York City

but you never spoke with its thickness

and it no longer belonged to you

It was the voice I knew

in utero,

the vocal pattern that raised me

Whether amplified or settled,

it was the most familiar sound I knew

It was the aggravated pitch I despised over the phone line

before I knew that you would die

Your final words, a warning

that you would never carry home

It was a vibration I thought

I remembered well,

but not a voice I could properly recall

Time passes with its advances

and this changes what we hear

Your brother’s wife brought you back to life

digitally, over the internet,

sending a recording out to all of us

who ever found home inside your womb

I’d seen your face in photographs

I had not forgotten its structure,

but I hadn’t heard you speak since I

fearfully hung up that phone,

back when I’d just begun flirting with the teenage years,

and all the years you’d never know

Now I was hearing you for the first time,

the Bronx rippling off your vocal chords

and I cried for the familiar and unfamiliar tone

It was a beautiful undoing

I’d been wrong, but I’d grown up with it,

the voice I thought you’d owned,

and now I know you were still that city girl,

its accent freely rolling off your tongue,

until life’s thief gave you a stillness

and you could speak no more

~Cynthia~

Written by me. All rights belong to me.

[wild-words-and-wounds]

“With the truth, we will do what? Become what? And in gaining the truth, what do we lose? It seems to me now that some truths will never never be enough to seal the mysteries that preceded them.” ~Alexis Schaitkin/Saint X

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“We don’t know what people look like. We know only what they look like to us. We have an idea of them, shaped by our affections, our memories, and this is the real distortion.” ~Alexis Schaitkin/Saint X

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“Sometimes the world tries ot knock it out of you. But I believe in music the way that some people believe in fairy tales.” ~August Rush

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The Bat

A bat took shelter in our back room

a couple months ago.

I discovered him as he discovered me,

as he flew out and touched my shoulder.

I screamed as if murder had been his intention

when his body brushed against mine.

He then settled on the floor a few feet away,

screaming back at me.

I know now that was his distress call.

That he was also scared.

I am fortunate he didn’t bite me

as a shield beyond his vocalized fear.

I understood so little in that moment

when he first startled me.

I could not possibly think rationally

about a creature I claim to love.

I’ve admired them from afar.

I follow bat sanctuaries on social media.

Clearly, I am an advocate

for these little flying outcasts.

I had wondered how I would react to one

if he were a stranger inside my home.

I envisioned myself as compassionate.

I was sure that I’d remain calm.

I believed that I’d be somebody other

than the person I was that day.

I wonder what else lurks inside of me

that I lie to and bury underneath layers.

I don’t know what I am capable of

when faced with something I don’t understand.

And I could tell you that I was just afraid,

but how closely does fear travel with rage?

Do I truly believe all of the things I say?

Would I still believe them in the darkness?

Do any of us know for certain

that no prejudices stick to our souls?

Is it only when the lights are on

and we fear exposure from what stands before us,

that we can pacify the internal intruder,

that we can keep the violence at bay?

~Cynthia~

Written by me. All rights belong to me.

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“But what about when you lose someone who is still alive? When you lose track of the person you know within a person they’ve become - what kind of grief is that?” ~Catherine Lacey/Pew

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“The human mind is so easily bent, and so uneasily smoothed.” ~Catherine Lacey/Pew

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~Linda Pastan~

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~Linda Pastan~

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