I Believe Her

By Matthew Donovan

I believe her because
her story gains her nothing.
Some of those she tells
say she’s seeking attention. 
They say she’s ruining
his reputation. 

I believe her because
it happens each day.
And because it’s in me 
to do what she says 
was done.

I believe her because she,
not I—lived it. Those that
cling to power deny it, or
say it’s forgivable
boys’ behavior.

I believe her because
we have it easy—crossing
alleyways and parking
garages; traveling alone
to the restroom. We cover
one another’s lies, even
as doing so ruins lives. 

I believe her because
the wolves inside me
are only sleeping. 


Matthew Donovan (he/him) is a retired, professional firefighter currently working for a local government. He was born and raised in the Bronx, and now lives in Connecticut with his wife Stephanie and their daughters. His poetry has been published in Permafrost, BarBar, Southern Quill, The Seraphic Review, and others.

Photo by Lucy Maude Ellis via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Reputation

TW: SA

By Frances Koziar

 

He speaks of his reputation
while I think of fates worse than death,
his name, when I would gladly give up mine
for a good night’s sleep, to see those nightmares
shaped like ordinary men slain
before their groping hands reach me; he speaks
of having a life ruined, not knowing
what that really means, not understanding
how men can form packs like wolves
at the first sound of a woman’s
assertiveness, ready
to tear that voice from her neck, carnage
be damned, not seeing our loss of reputation
every time we speak our names, our shame,
even when the evidence convinces anyone
who’ll let it; I laugh
when I want to cry, hold still
when I shake with fear, walk with poise
when I am running away, because attention
is the most dangerous thing of all. Smile
they tell you while you bleed out from the throat;
Speak, Pretty One,
but only if you say frivolous things; Sing—
but I can only hear screams.

 


Frances Koziar has published poetry in over 35 different literary magazines, including Vallum and Acta Victoriana. A young (disabled) retiree and a social justice advocate, she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Visit her website and follow her on Facebook.

Photo credit: “Eve in Shame” by Stanley Zimny via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Prolapse

By Tara Campbell

 

The uterus is tired.

The uterus is sorry
but it can’t seem to stay
in one place anymore,
which isn’t surprising
considering how often
it’s been poked
and prodded
and pricked
by congressmen’s pens.

The uterus would like
to get in a word of its own,
just one, even edgewise
just one goddamn word.

The uterus wishes
it could remember the words
to that song you sang
when you didn’t have to worry
about your uterus all the time,
when you didn’t have to be
so goddamn vigilant,
didn’t have to keep twisting
and turning away from men
shoving laws into it
edgewise.

The uterus is tired
so very tired.

The uterus would like
just one goddamn moment
to itself. The uterus just wants
to be. The uterus is sorry
it can’t give you that.
The uterus remembers when
it was barely aware of itself
which sounds like a contradiction
but was merely a state of grace.

The uterus is small and pink
and lovely and valued
and sacred and blessed.

But no, the uterus doesn’t believe
its own press. . .
well, it didn’t. . .
well, it shouldn’t have, and now
the uterus is continually disappointed
to find it is neither valued
nor sacred
nor blessed
nor even safe.

The uterus is tired
so goddamn tired.

The uterus is sorry it’s letting you down
because now it’s letting itself down
slowly, uncomfortably—
this is called “prolapse”
and the uterus wants you to know
this is not your fault either,
and it would have told you
everything sooner, but the truth
just gets the uterus bullied,
harassed, and threatened with rape
for upsetting men
(and, when the truth
is too educational,
it just gets the uterus kicked
off the socials for “porn”).

Some days the uterus feels philosophical,
and some days the uterus feels angry—
who are we kidding,
most days the uterus feels angry
if not for itself
then on behalf of other uteruses
who are told they’re overreacting
to getting bullied,
harassed, and threatened with rape
for upsetting men.

The uterus is often depressed
but today the uterus is simply tired
the uterus needs a break
to forget how everyone
is always talking about it
even when it’s not in the room—
especially when it’s not in the room.

The uterus is tired,
and the uterus is tired
of being asked why it’s tired.
The uterus no longer wishes
to be interrogated.

The uterus just needs a little time
a little goddamn time
to itself, and who can blame it
for feeling heavy
for wanting to slide
just a little bit lower
and rest after everything
it’s had to endure.

The uterus simply wants to sit
in the warm and the dark,
mind its own business
and quietly sink, baptized
in silence, blessed
finally
with one goddamn
moment of
peace.

 


Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University’s MFA in Creative Writing. Her publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, CRAFT Literary, and Writers Resist. She’s the author of a novel and four multi-genre collections including her newest, Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection. She teaches writing at venues such as American University, Johns Hopkins University, the Writer’s Center, Catapult, and the National Gallery of Art.

Photo credit: Ittmust via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.


 

Joelle Cantrell’s Fanfiction

By Holly A. Stovall

Until the paper that Joelle Cantrell wrote made it to the top of my stack of To Kill a Mockingbird essays to grade for sophomore English at Jackson High, I had been eating clean and feeling good. I was slouching deep into the couch, a pint of Clean Cream sugar-free-non-fat frozen balanced on a dictionary by my side. Only a few more papers were left in the stack, and then I would be free to hide away upstairs to write fanfiction. I loved to teach Mockingbird, but then I read Joelle’s first sentence, and an unease creeped up around my skin, like hives.

I’ll show you what Joelle turned in, and you’ll see why I’m unnerved, but if you love Mockingbird like I do, if you voted it the best freakin’ novel ever written, like the readers in all those fancy national polls, then don’t get too involved.

 

So Close to Her Momma in Heaven

By Joelle Cantrell

Last week, Bob Ewell held a pillow on his daughter’s face until she passed out. Sometimes he puts his hands around her neck, but means only to injure her, so he doesn’t squeeze as hard as he could, and he doesn’t leave bruises in front, where people would see, not that anyone would care. Sometimes, Mayella has to leave the house to run an errand in town, and folks might hate Bob even more if they saw bruises on his grown daughter’s neck, but their hate for him doesn’t transfer to protection for her. She doubts he’ll go to jail if she dies, because he didn’t even get arrested after he knocked Mayella’s momma’s head hard against the stove. He doesn’t know Mayella was watching that night. The sheriff came to investigate, Bob said it was an accident, and there was no murder charge. Weren’t ever any drama. Weren’t ever any trial.

Today, when Bob orders Mayella to chop up a chiffarobe, she doesn’t tell him she’s too tired. If she does, he’ll hit her. But it’s like the life is spilling out of her because last night all kinds of blood had been letting down, more than the monthly, more pain, bigger clumps. She would have loved her own baby to nurse, but it’s just as well it miscarried, as she can barely take care of the kids Daddy had with Momma.

Over a year ago, the little ones started begging Mayella to take them for ice cream, so she saved up, and then, finally, when she had enough for each child, she made them wash and put their shoes on and they were about ready to leave, when Daddy ordered Mayella to do some chore. He’d done this a handful of times, and the kids were disappointed when Mayella told them “not today” after all.

So finally, now, they ask again, and Mayella is fixing to take them, the thought of it cheering her up, but her daddy tells her to chop up the chiffarobe for firewood, so she just sighs and gives the kids the nickels she’d been saving and tells them not to lick down the ice cream too fast or they’ll get a headache, and to come straight home afterwards. There’s an extra nickel, the one for Mayella’s cone, and she keeps it.

The children leave and she’s inside swinging this hatchet into the middle of the chiffarobe, trying to splinter it, but it’s tough, hard wood. The hatchet gets stuck, and she lets it hang there while she catches her breath and rests her arms. She needs a nap, but her daddy will kill her if she don’t get that thing out the door before he gets back. He means to kill her dead. If not today, then tomorrow or next week. She needs to gather her strength, so she goes to sit on the front steps a moment, and that’s when Tom Robinson comes by and tips his hat.

She calls to him, asking if he’d please loosen up the chiffarobe into small enough parts that she can carry them outside.

“My daddy kill me if it ain’t done when he get back,” she says.

Everybody knows her daddy’s mean as a junkyard bitch.

Tom Robinson nods and turns to the house. Mayella goes in first and holds the door open for him to follow. She says, “Just chop it up small enough so it fits through the door. Then be on your way. I got a nickel for you.”

“I won’t take your nickel, mam,” Tom Robinson says.

She tells him he might as well take it, seeing she has no use for it now that the kids have gone on for ice cream without her. He says to save it for next time, and her eyes water, like she’s going to cry, because not since her momma died has anyone been kind. She knows she’s not supposed to like no colored man, but his voice is warm, like sunlight in winter.

Tom Robinson turns to the chiffarobe with the hatchet still stuck in it. Mayella gets a good look at his arms, how the one hangs there and the other pulls the hatchet out of the chiffarobe, like picking wildflowers in a field. He swings the hatchet with his good arm, and the wood gives way. He circles around the chiffarobe, moving his arm, high and low, and she watches chunks of wood splinter and fall.

She doesn’t know when her daddy’s coming back, and it wouldn’t do for Tom Robinson to be there when he does, so she says, “Thank you, I can take it from here.” She’s not sure that she’ll be able to finish on her own, but she’ll do her damnedest.

She stretches her hand towards him to take the hatchet, and then it just happens. She rests her forehead on his chest. “Just let me rest my head here a moment, Tom Robinson. Just for a moment,” she says, and he lets her. She closes her eyes and cries. Tears come when you don’t expect it and can’t explain it. “My daddy, my daddy does things to me,” she says.

Suddenly, Tom Robinson bolts out the door and leaves her standing, staggering. When she looks up, her daddy’s fist meets her face, knocking her to the floor. Then he gets on top of her and squeezes her neck, front and back. While he’s squeezing, she feels so close to her momma in heaven. She sees her momma’s face in a light. Her momma is the light. She passes out and when she wakes up, Daddy’s poking her with his thing, saying, “God damn bloody bitch.”

She hasn’t escaped this life yet, and it’s just as well because she promised her mamma she’d take care of the kids and the gardenias. Her daddy gets up and disappears out the door and Mayella lies there, trying to muster a drop of strength. When he comes back, the sheriff’s with him.

“See them damn bruises all over her neck and face. That’s what that colored boy did to her,” except Bob Ewell uses the vulgar term for colored people. Mayella’s momma told her the n-word was wrong, because Jesus says to treat your neighbor as yourself.

Weeks pass, then months. Mayella gains some strength back. Bob hasn’t beat her since that day. There’s going to be a trial at the fancy courthouse. Her daddy tells her she’s going to speak to a judge in front of an audience, and all she has to say is that Tom Robinson took advantage of her. He uses the word “rape,” and she figures that it means it’s when a colored man puts his thing in you. If her daddy does it, it’s just him being a daddy, and not a crime.

Her daddy takes her to town to meet with a man in a suit, Mr. Gilmer.

“Mayella, we’ve got to rehearse. Atticus is rehearsing with Tom Robinson, and you will practice with me. Now, pretend I’m the judge, and that’s Tom Robinson in that chair.” Mr. Gilmer points to an empty chair.

Mayella nods.

“Point to the man who hit your face, strangled your neck, and raped you,” Mr. Gilmer says.

Mayella slowly raises her hand towards the empty chair.

Bob Ewell stands and stomps his foot. “Ain’t nobody believe her! Mayella, you got to show’em. You been wronged, violated. You got to get upset.”

They rehearse until Mr. Gilmer and Bob Ewell are satisfied.

The day of the trial, Mayella finally steps inside the courthouse, with its towering ceiling, polished wood, and white paint. It has a balcony upstairs, like an opera house. Folks are dressed up, like they’re there for a show. Scout Finch, Harper Lee’s little narrator, paints Mayella as entirely uncultured and illiterate, but Mayella knows more than she lets on, and she’s read about opera houses.

The courthouse is packed, colored people upstairs and the white ones below. The white ones want to hear the lie her daddy is making her tell. The white folks, she thinks, ain’t never wanted to help her or her momma, even though she’s white like them, but she’s dirt poor, living at the edge of the trash dump and next door to the colored folks. She’s invisible to the people in town, with their sidewalks and porch swings, their living rooms with couches, their kitchens with tables. But they know how mean her daddy is. They know her momma’s death was never explained, and if they didn’t care that her momma died, they won’t care if she does.

Still, she don’t like to say anything against Tom Robinson, but if she doesn’t do what her daddy says, he’ll kill her. And he means to kill her dead.

They’re calling her over to a chair by the wooden box that contains the judge. Mayella’s daddy is staring her down with his most onery face, like a rabid dog. It makes her freeze.

•   •   •

Scout wasn’t there to witness the event in Bob Ewell’s house, but she was at the courthouse and can tell it from here.

Scout sees the court paint Mayella as an oversexed hussy. Today we call it victim blaming. Well, I’m sorry, but f*ck Harper Lee, because it’s not that simple.

Court’s a place for the men and their laws and punishments. It doesn’t have anything to do with getting to the truth of the danger Mayella’s in, only with the story folks want to hear and tell.

The essay assignment asks for evidence, but what’s the point of evidence if the wrong man’s on trial?

P.S. Dear Mrs. Raulston, I know you take off points for postscripts because “they take the reader out of the narrative,” so let me just say that this is the narrative. Look up. Did you know that more than three women and girls a day die from domestic violence? That’s every day, year after year. A fourth of all girls sustain gender-based violence before age 19, and more than a third of women during their lifetimes. The World Economic Forum calls gendered violence a pandemic. Also, like, 97 percent of the people who report rape are telling the truth, but you make us read about the one who lies. Do you want us to believe the girls who report are lying? We’re not supposed to believe Mayella or any victim? Is that why the principal didn’t take Kayla seriously when she reported to him that she was sexually assaulted in the band room? Are you teaching male superiority?

 

“No,” I said, though there was nobody nearby to hear me. The word “no,” irritating and itchy, vibrated in my throat. I’d told the class not to turn in fanfiction. I started to write “Re-do” at the top of Joelle’s paper but got only as far as “R” before scratching it out. Something about Lee’s novel now nagged at me, as if I couldn’t keep reading it as I had before. A murky sense of betrayal was sinking down from my throat and into my gut, hot and awful. I needed to sooth it away, but the melted Clean Cream was bitter.

I slid Joelle’s paper under the others, padded into the kitchen, and dug around the back of the freezer until I found a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. Just one spoonful would be enough, but it soothed me so much that I wrapped my mouth around another and another. The cold sweet cream dissolved my momentary doubts about Mockingbird. I leaned on the counter, giving in, until only a puddle was left in the carton, which I then tossed in the trash.

I fished Joelle’s story out of the bottom of the pile and wrote “A” at the top, not for her, but for me, as in “A” for ancient history, meaning I didn’t have to think about it anymore, and I wouldn’t have to try to teach teenagers about domestic violence in literature. This way, Joelle wouldn’t protest her grade or complain to her mom, who would complain to me and then to the principal. The mom would write an Op Ed for the newspaper. There might be a culture war. Instead of all that craziness, I planned to go on teaching Mockingbird as I always had, not calling attention to the crimes against Mayella. It will be as if I’d never read Joelle Cantrell’s fanfiction.

 


Holly A. Stovall (she, her), a new editor at Writers Resist, is writing a thesis for her MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies. She has an MA in Women’s History and a PhD in Spanish Literature. For over a decade, she taught Women’s Studies at Western Illinois University, where she earned tenure, but her career as a feminist academic ended when a neoliberal governor starved WIU of funding. Despite being one of the most diverse and economically successful departments in the university, the Department of Women’s Studies was closed, and her position eliminated.

Since leaving academia, Holly has gone on to publish fiction and creative nonfiction in LitBreak Magazine, Writers Resist, and the Mid/South Anthology. For her MFA thesis, she’s writing a memoir about the grief of her layoff and the space she finally gave herself to fully grieve her losses. She lives in Macomb, Il, with her husband, son, and standard poodle, but visits Chicago regularly. Visit her website at HollyAWrites.com.

Photo credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM, via a Creative Commons, license.


A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.


 

What I Learn

By Lorna Rose

 

I listen to the sweaty silence,
his throbbing presence as he stares at
my developing chest.

I learn to calculate the tides.
Learn his breath smells like mints when he’s offering me up.
Men’s gazes have teeth.

Pivot and scan for the response he wants
at the appropriate time.
You’re pretty. Perform for me.

Legs and boobs get you far. They open doors
to bedrooms
where all good girls go.

Learn to hide and calculate the tides.
Aren’t you proud you made your father happy?

 


Lorna Rose is a Pacific Northwest writer and speaker. Her narrative nonfiction and poetry have been recognized by Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Oregon Poetry Association, and have appeared in About Place Journal, Third Wednesday, Jellyfish Review, Scary Mommy, and elsewhere. Lorna also speaks publicly on motherhood, finding resilience through writing, and her experience in AmeriCorps. She is at work on a memoir about going from LA party girl to trail worker in rural Alaska. For more, visit Lorna’s website.

Photograph by That guy names Jere via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Everyone Tells Me

By Alma A.

 

Everyone tells me
It wasn’t my fault,
That karma will get him,
Will leave him to rot.

Everyone tells me
I should have fought harder,
And why did I wear that,
I was asking for trouble.

Everyone tells me,
That ‘no’ isn’t binding,
It’s fluid, it’s blurred,
I am overreacting.

Filthy, contaminated,
Shameful, guilt-ridden.
I could have stopped him,
A dim future, unwritten.

Everyone tells me,
That I’m not okay,
But maybe I will be,
Maybe someday.

When hell freezes over,
And rapists stop raping,
Only there might I get
My chance at escaping.

But when my words reach no ears,
And the fighting ceases,
I’m the one who will be there
To pick up the pieces.

 


Alma A. is originally from Boston, and now resides in Canada with her cat and dog. She is a student with a passion for writing, and she aspires to do it on a professional level. She mostly writes science fiction in her spare time and sells her crafts on the side.

Photograph by Jane Fox via a Creative Commons license.


A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

tell me you’re open

By A. Martine

Editor’s warning: sexual violence

 

i wake from the dream with gashes in my chest
snakes turning warm on my blood
half-interred in the wounds
while i go maybe it was me
surely it was me, surely it was me

athena would have torn
them from me and slung them
at my head to stop the babble
had i, in her temple, done the babbling

it wouldn’t have made a difference that i was
sixteen and he thrice that, rapacious
where i was not: he bore poseidon’s might
by virtue of being a man. even his
threats colored off like jazzy quips
to surrounding ears

till even i considered
maybe it was me, maybe it was me
till i inflected each word in turn
to change the sentence’s meaning

and make it more + less palatable

friendless forlorn empty dysmorphic
and sixteen, and sixteen, and sixteen
the sort of spotlight that should be
exhilarating: gift after
palliation after urging
meant to soft-pedal the panic gong

he said
tell me you’re open
instead
don’t say no, say maybe
be kind
i am offering love
and you
are killing, are killing
me

violation: to be stripped
to the flaring
flesh, and be demanded modesty

it’s been over ten years now
i’ve said it with less conviction since
knowing better

but sometimes i am capsized
from pre-slumber by that thought
maybe it was me
surely it was me
i said no, said no again
should have maybe sung it like a gorgon

 


A. Martine is a trilingual writer, musician and artist of color who goes where the waves take her. She might have been a kraken in a past life. She’s an Assistant Editor at Reckoning Pressand co-Editor-in-Chief/Producer/Creative Director of The Nasiona. Her collection AT SEA, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Kingdoms in the WildPoetry Prize, is forthcoming from CLASH BOOKS. Some words are found or forthcoming in: Déraciné, The Rumpus, Moonchild Magazine, Marías at Sampaguitas, Luna Luna, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Pussy Magic, South Broadway Ghost Society, Gone Lawn, Boston Accent Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cosmonauts Avenue, Tenderness Lit. Follow her on Twitter, @Maelllstrom and visit her website at www.amartine.com.

French Medusa mask, gilt bronze, late 18th century–early 19th century, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Editor’s note: If you are experiencing, or have experienced, sexual, physical, psychological, emotional, and/or financial violence, you do not deserve; it is a crime. If you are in the United States, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline, at 1-800-656-4673, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline for help: 1-800-799-7233.

He Comes at Night

By J.M. Lasley

Editor’s warning: assault, self-harm, mental illness

 

He comes at night, when no one is watching.

The soles of his white shoes squeak on the shiny white floors, reflecting white lights above, humming and buzzing through night and day. The keys jingle-jangle and the door swings open, screaming.

He smells of sweat and the cigarettes he told his wife he quit smoking. Sometimes, like the first time, his breath stings my nose and my tongue: liquid fire from a flask he’s not supposed to sip from. He doesn’t care, he tells me, chattering as his fingers fumble with his belt. She’s a dumb bitch anyway and she’ll never know. Those idiots who run this place, they’ll never know, no one will know, and it will just keep happening.

The smoking, the drinking, and me.

I’m safe in the daytime, hidden amongst the bodies in the community room. I fold and fold bright squares of paper transformed into birds and butterflies, things I only see in pictures now that I’m here. I fold a lion to bite his legs and a tiger to roar him away, a bear to stand between us, with paws as big as my face.

They say we’re here because we’re mad. This is sometimes so. Sometimes I’m so mad I can feel it choking me, drowning me, my head lifting as I gasp for breath and the angry water spills up and out of me. That’s when they strap me, drag me kicking and screaming to the white room, to the bed, and I will have even less to fight him with between the straps and the pills. They taste like chalk and take the madness away. For a while. So I try not to get mad.

I try new things all the time. When it started, I tried kicking and screaming. But no one watches so no one came and the kicking and screaming only made his eyes sparkle and his breathing, fast.

No one asks about the bruises or the shadows. I can see them in the reflection of the window of my door. Not real glass. Real glass can shatter and cut and end, but this glass just bounces and breaks your knuckles when you hit it. I can only see myself dimly. But I can see the bruises and the shadows. Does he have magic? Is that how no one else can see? When the faces in the blue outfits do see them, eyes squinching behind their glasses, nose wrinkling, they mumble mutter, “She’s taken to hurting herself, poor thing.” More chalk and straps, more helpless nights.

No glass, no knives, no knitting, nothing poking, prodding, nails trimmed daily, nothing nowhere. Until the Big One broke the chair. Ferret, the tall skinny twitchy one, he had been swiping a pill or two from the Big One for days. Ferret is a Blue Shirt, not a White Shirt or a Body, but he takes the pills sometimes: the chalk we don’t want anyway, the chalk that sometimes the others need. He took too much for too many days and the Big One woke, a sleeping giant gone mad, real mad, breaking the chair over a White Shirt sending splinters skitter-scattering over the floor. Behind my chair, hands over my head, I felt one touch my foot. I lost my shoes again, which means a pinch from Nurse, but that’s how I felt it. Long, jagged, beautiful wood. Snatching it up, I tucked it under my bra band.

The giant has been taken down: a pebble to the brow or a needle to the arm, I wasn’t sure. They pat us down one by one, pulling bits of the chair or other contraband out of hair and pockets, waist bands. When they try to reach for my bra band I crouch and scream, as if I am scared, as if they are hurting me. They are not hurting me and I am not afraid, but they forget where they were searching. Others were not so clever, they did not hide their pieces before the White Shirts thought to check.

When I am put back in my room and the coast is clear I hide my treasure beneath my mattress, tucked in the coiling.

For a while I tried the not fighting. I lay and stared at the wall when he came, counting the squeaks of the bed frame, seeing faces in the cracks on the painted wall. The first time he cursed and left. Other times he tried to hurt me, tried to slap me back into madness, so that he could crush me into the pillow again. The faces on the wall smiled at me, and I smiled back.

Then a new body came to the playroom, the Community Room. Her face was young; behind her flat bangs she had wide eyes, round ears, a gap between her teeth. She was older than she looked, she would tell them when the old Nurses called her honey, baby, and the Whites called her sugar-pie. The soul in her eyes was older, that was plain as daylight through gridded windows. Her arms were decorated with the scars of her suffering, a tally for every sorrow. She folded birds with me, kindness in her gentle hands and the small smile she gave me when I clapped.

He would do her instead, he told me. He’d see if she’d give him what he was looking for. So, I fought again. Better me, who was filled with madness, than she who had only sorrow.

The girl is gone. She left yesterday, squeezing me tight and whispering sweet words of remembrance I know she has already forgotten outside these iron and stone walls. I hope she forgets me. I am glad she is gone. It is time to try again.

The door has been closed behind me, the lock clicking into place, the light inside taken away so that I am left under a thin blanket and darkness in my bed. When the calling and the footfalls stop, when the chatterings and cryings and crowings of the Bodies stop, I slip out of my bed and crawl under it. Between the coils, my wood waits. Grabbing it, I set to work.

For several nights I do this, between the time the light leaves and he comes. Sawing, sawing, pulling. I dispose of my work in pieces, so they will not know. I stuff the remnants in my bra, then into the trash when no one is looking. They think I’m mad, but I am more than mad.

The night comes. It is time to try. The light leaves, the lock clicks, the darkness settles. Before the sounds disappear, I lift up my mattress, slide onto the frame and then settle the mattress back down on top of me, hidden in the hole I have made. And I wait. My heart is loud in my ears, louder than I have ever heard it. Eventually it comes. The squeaking white shoes on the white floor. The jingle-jangle. The scream of the door. And then a new sound. He is surprised. I cannot put my hand over my mouth so I bite my lips between my teeth so that he cannot hear my glee. Now he thinks I am magic.

I hear his footsteps leave, squeaking down the hall and I hear his call to those who are not watching. He has triggered the alarm. I push the mattress up, slide out and then back on top of the mattress as it settles, covering myself with the blanket.

Many footsteps pad down the hallway, and people rush into the room. I blink open my eyes, pretending I was sleeping deeply, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. I look up at them—the White Shirts, the Blue Shirt and the Nurse.

They ask me questions, throwing words at me in anger. My eyes are wide at them, and I pull back, lifting my blanket up. Where did you go, they ask, how did you get out? I shake my head again and again. They begin to question him, begin to think maybe he is the mad one.

“Why was he in my room?”

It is the first time I have spoken to them in some time. Usually I sing—nonsense songs they call them but I know better. To me they are pink and yellow, blue and grey, and life lives within the sound in my ears. “Why did he come here?” I cock my head and wrinkle my nose. “Smells bad.”

I see their noses twitching, opening and closing as they take in the sour and the sting. Their eyes meet to trade secrets, and I sense when I become a Body again. Now he is the target. They pull him away, nothing wrong here, but they have some questions. I see the Blue Shirt pat his chest, feel the hidden flask in that chest pocket, see the sweat start to drip down his face. I giggle in glee when the door is closed because I am more than mad. I am clever like the fox that escaped the hound.

The next night, I hide again in my clever fox hole, and listen, telling my heart to not beat so loudly so I can hear if there are squeaking shoes. But nothing squeaks and the keys don’t jangle and the door doesn’t scream; I know that I am free. So, I come out, lie down on my lumpy bed and smile and smile as the stars dance me to sleep from beyond the bars.

Days pass and I don’t see him. I dance in the community room to the old music because I have slept, my bruises are fading, and there is less pain. But then, when I have not been mad enough for chalk for days and days so that I know the pills are not making me see the things that are not there that look there, he comes back. He does not look at me as he watches the bodies, but I know that in not looking he is staring directly at me. And I know that he will come again.

Each night I wait. I know he enjoys that I am waiting. In the morning he looks at me once, to see more and more shadows sleeping under my eyes and he smiles. And I wait. I know it is a matter of time before he comes. But I pretend to sleep every night. The squeaking goes up and down the hall and pauses—but there is no jingle-jangle. Not yet. He cannot come because they are watching.

Finally, I begin sleeping through the nights. Perhaps he will not come—perhaps they have learned their lesson and there are watchers now. The sparkle grows in his eyes as I tremble in my corner and I know that I am wrong. One day, as he passes me, his fingers prod me sharply in the back. I jump up and scream and soon there are White Shirts all around me and I know the chalk and straps are coming. I calm down but they make me take it anyway. I pretend to, but I hold the chalk behind my back tooth—they cannot see and they do not check too good. I know he will come tonight thinking they have taken the madness out of me and I will not be clever enough to hide.

He is only sort of right.

The white soled shoes squeak down the white floored hall, under humming white lights. Sweat drips down my back, my spine, like a slide. The keys jingle jangle. The door opens, screaming.  He chatters at me while fumbling with his belt.

“Thought you had me good, didn’t you, little bitch. Well, if you thought I was rough before—”

I stop his chattering. I swing my arm down—the wood clenched in my fist, its ragged point like a spear—and then it is in his neck. When I pull it out, the wood is wet now, soaking it in, turning red instead of brown and his eyes are surprised, and this surprise is even better than before because I can see it. When he falls, his eyes still wide and his life pumping out of the hole I have made, I let him. White becomes pink and then red—the clothes, the floor, my hands.

I smile.

He came at night, when no one was watching.

 


J.M. Lasley believes that the greatest form of resistance is kindness and empathy. She lives in small town Georgia for now, where she keeps her dog company and lives a thousand lives through stories. Her short story “Wish Perfect” will be published in 2020.

Photo by Andy Li on Unsplash.

Honduran Refugees in My Classroom 2

By Alexander P. Garza

Editor’s warning: assault, violence against women

 

“Mira a mi tia.” Look at my aunt.
“La mataron.” They killed her.

She shows me a photo on her phone:
a black honduran woman, motionless,

face down, half-naked, ass exposed,
top torn. The girl tells me her aunt’s just been

raped and murdered, left dead.
She got the photo via text from a family friend.

The image forever ingrained in my brain
during our history class, right then.

“Another one down,” she says in Spanish.
“Glad we got out,” she says.

 


Alexander P. Garza is a writer, actor, and educator from Houston, TX. His work can be seen in Veil: Journal of Darker Musings, Thirteen Myna Birds, Black Poppy Review, and others. He was awarded the 2019 Dark Poetry Scholarship Award by the Horror Writers Association, was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Tintero Projects for work inspired by their Latin American Exhibit: Play and Grief, and he has worked on and offstage at the Alley Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, Main Street Theater, and Mildred’s Umbrella Theatre Company. Visit him on Instagram/Twitter, @alexanderpgarza, and on his website http://www.alexanderpgarza.com.

Photo credit: LasTesis performs the feminist anthem “Un violador en tu camino” (“A rapist in your way”), in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, from Honduras Tierra Libre.

Post-Election Meltdown

By Marcella Remund

 

I am 60 years old. In my lifetime,

my mother’s lifetime, and all the
lifetimes that came before,
no woman has been president.

Don’t tell me to get over it

I have TRAINED blonde footballers
for jobs I couldn’t get without a penis,
jobs that paid ten times my single-mom
salary. After 40 years, I still must work

harder, longer, sweeter to make less.
I have been the “chick in the band.”

I am afraid to go out alone at night.
To walk alone, eat alone, travel alone.
I have been targeted as a child, nine
months’ pregnant, wrinkled and old.
Pedophiles picked me out at 7, at 13.

Don’t tell me to let it go.

I have worked since I was 14.
So has my mother, who worked
two and sometimes three jobs
until she was 70, so had my
grandmother, both of them always,
always, still expected to keep a clean
house, put dinner on the table, pay
bills, keep four kids quiet.

Don’t tell me to move on.

I have daughters, daughters-in-law,
granddaughters, nieces, girl cousins,
sisters-in-law. Their world will go on
just like before, unequal, unsafe, unjust,
until those men are gone—you know
who they are—and worse:

they will inherit a tanking economy
for all but billionaires, greed and profit
our national anthem, international
isolation in our buffoonery, and worse:

open, ignored, sanctioned hatred
and humiliation aimed at my non-male,
non-white, non-Christian, non-straight,
othered friends & family (and yours,
because you have them too).
The list of damages goes on and on.

Don’t tell me we have other work to do.

I have earned this anger.

 DO YOU HEAR ME?

Don’t tell me not to feel this grief,
this disbelief, this loss of faith.
I will open my heart and my home
to those who are terrified, paralyzed,
hopeless. And I will move on,
get over it, let it go when I’m
goddam ready. Until that moment,
I will keep screaming

NO.

 


Marcella Remund is a native of Omaha, Nebraska, and a South Dakota transplant, where she teaches English at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals. Her chapbook, The Sea is My Ugly Twin, was published in 2018 by Finishing Line Press, and her first full-length collection, The Book of Crooked Prayer, is forthcoming from Finishing Line in 2020.

Photo credit: The sculpture, “Innovation,” is by artist Badral Bold, made with horse tail. It is photographed by Frank Lindecke via a Creative Commons license.

Man with a Knife

By Tara Stillions Whitehead

 

ENTER death as sound blackening an already shadowy scene—as a long, hard lament from the HORN of the failed getaway car. Then, as a YOUNG WOMAN. Everything is lost; everyone has lost. At this distance, death is an exquisite execution of convention. A triumph of method acting. Near-perfect cinema. It will be studied and taught and adapted and celebrated for its shape.

It is easy to rage over a newly motherless child.

*

It happened in broad daylight. It happened at night. It unmistakably happened. It was day. It was night. It was. (It still is.) He bent him over, he broke him in half, he bent him until he broke and couldn’t be put back together again. He told him this is a common occurrence. He used the word occurrence by mistake. This is how guys let off steam, he said. This is how you make friends in the business, he said. And this is how you get away with it. Over here, behind the condor, between the generator and the empty two-banger. It’s fast, he said. It’s hard. It hurts, he said. But that’s okay. That’s part of it, he said. That’s part of what makes it great. When you’re older, you’ll appreciate it, he said. The pain. You’ll see I’m right, he said, in a voice that was sure, in a body anticipating relief. And then he folded the boy hard into that posture that broke him. He demonstrated, the boy said in a documentary twenty years later, how to ruin a life.

*

ENTER deception as a WOMAN whom we have never seen but whose rumored infidelities keep the emotional plot moving, whose fatal intrigue is meant to distract the players from burgeoning political avarice. While the newspapers pay for pictures, big money for images of fucking or almost fucking someone else’s husband, someone desiccates the orange groves to the north, slakes penniless farmers with broken promises, and forges the names of the dead. The inland empire is ripe for annexing, the groomed child is ripe for killing.

ENTER a millionaire to execute both. It’s savage. It’s noir. It’s a captivating example of how to unravel humanity on a screen.

It’s easy to rage over pictures that hide the truth.

*

I’ve told the bloggers, she says. I’ve told the LA Times, she says. Didn’t you see my interview on The Talk? Read my sworn affidavit, she says. Read all three of them. Forget the Deadline Hollywood nonsense. It’s a hashtag epidemic. It’s total bologna. I know my husband. I know everything about him, more than his doctors. He sleeps in the fetal position—when he sleeps—and he only fucks women, okay? Vaginas. Tits. Never anal. Not even plugs. A wife knows, okay. Ask me anything. That beauty mark that made him a millionaire is a chicken pox scar. He didn’t grow up in Reseda. He’s from rural Pennsylvania. His mother was Mennonite and he didn’t learn to drive until he was twenty-fucking-three years old. His father died of sepsis after he severed his hand in a grain mill, and his sister Lucy committed suicide at ten. Ten. If that doesn’t fuck you—Look, E. worked his ass off to float to the top of this cesspool. He didn’t fuck that casting director’s kid in the back of his town car. He didn’t sodomize any child stars. It’s a hashtag epidemic. It’s social media. It’s a lot of angry women and crying faggots, okay? This isn’t just business these people are fucking with. It’s the whole entertainment industry. Thousands of people. It’s livelihood—yours, E.’s, and mine. Everyone’s. My husband doesn’t fuck kids, okay. A wife knows. Now put this bitch to bed so we can get back to production.

*

ENTER truth as obscenity, as a confession: She’s my sister. She’s my daughter. She’s my sister. She’s my daughter. She’s my sister and she’s my daughter. It is cunning and unexpected. It is one of the most spectacular scenes in all of film. Any film professor with a degree in cinema will assure us of it. The brutality, they say—

It is easy to rage over a fatherless daughter.

*

That’s great. You did great. Do you high five? Alright, high five! Okay, okay. So, next time we meet, it’ll be at my other office. Seventh floor of the Burbank building. The third office to the left. Be sure to wash up first, okay? You can’t be sticky during an audition. There’s a bathroom in the foyer off the elevator. It has good lighting. Take your time. Practice your lines for the new scene. Do whatever you gotta do to get warmed up, okay? Be sure to tell your mother to wait downstairs again. She’ll only distract you. Mothers are just distractions. Tell her to get a coffee and take a long walk through the studio store. Tell her she can buy anything she wants. You like Harry Potter? Avengers? The Flash? Of course you do. Tell her to give the cashier my name. It’s on me. Everything is on me. Isn’t that cool? It’s pretty cool, right? That’s what it’s like to be famous. You can buy anything you want. You can go anywhere you want. Do anything you want. It’s pretty cool. Hey, come here. A little closer. Yeah, right there. Perfect. Are you scared? Don’t be scared. It’s okay. I know what I’m doing. Trust me, okay? Can you trust me? Think about your mom and all the things you’ll be able to buy her. Think about how cool your house will be once you make it big. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing, okay. There. See. That’s not so bad, right? It’s kind of good, isn’t it? Right. Right. Now, tell me … how would you like to be famous?

*

Top 10 Anticipated Series in Development:                                              [3/27/2020]

.

.

.

4.  Untitled #metoo Project | NC-17 | Action – Drama – Suspense | Announced

Attorney who “would never put herself in a position to be raped” represents network mogul slammed with allegations that he sexually assaulted children and young actresses.

8-episode mini-series| Director: M. Garcea | Starring: C. Beavers, M. Roberts

*

One of the broken boys died of addiction. But not really. He died of pneumonia. But not really. Can shame kill? Because the boy’s blood was infected with it. And whether it was the shame that caused the emptiness that caused the use that caused the addiction that caused the pneumonia that caused his death—he can never confirm. Dead boys can’t defend themselves or explain. They can’t talk at all, not like living boys, the unbroken ones anyway.

It is easy to rage over a boy who cannot speak.

*

85     EXT. – STONE CANYON RESERVOIR – DAY – MAGIC HOUR            (Omitted)   85*

LOW ANGLE BEHIND the feet of two men standing on the gravel perimeter of the empty reservoir. DARK RINGS mark varying latitudes of higher water levels, times long gone. One of the men, M., 37, wears khaki shorts and a bulletproof vest over his button-down. The dark-suited man to M.’s right, K., 55, speaks in sharp monotone throughout, hands resigned to his pockets. As the SUN SETS, we STAY ON the men’s backs, sometimes catch a glimpse of them in profile.

M.

You’ve seen Chinatown, right?

K. nods.

M. (CONT’D)

The scene where Gittes gets his nose sliced. That
was shot right over there.

M. points off-screen.

M. (CONT’D)

Polanski played the attacker.

(pause)

He had a choice, you know. As the director. He
chose to be Man with a Knife. No name, just a man
and his weapon. He chose to play that role, to be the
one to say “kitty cat” instead of pussy. To be the
guy who disfigures Nicholson and tells him to stop
trying to uncover the truth. It was 1973. Polanski
had a thing for knives.

(turns to K.)

I’m not killing myself.

K.

No one really wants that.

M.

A lot of people sure sound like they do. Trolls, E.,
the media, lawyers

(looks at K.)

Well, most of them.

K.

Hey, I’m here for you, buddy.

M.

These Twitter trolls. They’re stuck in a time warp.
I’m forty-two. I’m married and have two daughters.
But people see my name in their feeds and they
think time hasn’t passed. They think I’m still that
goofy kid they loved almost thirty years ago. How
could anything bad have ever happened to him, they
ask? He was so goofy and healthy, he never looked
hurt. But now they hate me. For nothing. For
nothing except telling the truth. People hate when
the truth gets in the way of what they believe, so if I
just disappear, if I’m not here to force them to
choose truth—

(stops himself)

Fuck.

The SUN lowers into frame, FLARES. The men become SILHOUETTES.

M. (CONT’D)

You know, Polanski experienced total brutality in
his life. He fled the Nazis. His mother died in
Auschwitz. He lost Sharon in the most horrific way.
His life is the culmination of catastrophic
circumstances. It’d be easy to forgive a person like
that, to say they were so fucked up as a kid, as a
young father-to-be, that they didn’t know how to do
things right.

(pauses)

Except that when you’ve been the victim, you know
what wrong is, and you know complicity. You
choose to do bad. Polanski had a choice. Those
kids—Sam Gailey, the girls in Gstaad—

(pauses)

They’ve heard it too. “You’re lying.” “Go kill
yourself.” “Give us back our brilliant Polanski.”

(pauses)

I’m not killing myself.

K.

You have a lot to live for, pal.

M.

People marvel at how Chinatown ends, how fucked
up it is. But they like it. They like that Gittes is too
powerless to save anyone. It makes their own
powerlessness okay. People thought it was real hard
to end a film that way given the circumstances of
Watergate, the paranoia and desire for transparency.
But then they saw their own powerlessness. And
they thought, well shit, here’s a movie that tells it
like it is.

(laughs)

Polanski knew his audience. He knew what he was
doing, what a film could really achieve.

(pauses)

You know, Gittes’s last line wasn’t in Townes’ final
draft. In the original ending, Gittes was livid,
berating the police, proselytizing justice while
Cross held his dead daughter, the one he fucked and
fathered another daughter with. In the original,
Gittes was real passionate about calling out
authority. He was angry and relatable. He was a
hopeful kind of fiction.

(pause)

But you’ve seen the movie. You know how it really ends.

(pause)

“As little as possible.” That’s the kicker right there.
That’s the tagline of this whole damn thing. That’s
the most real line I’ve ever heard in a film. Because
men can be broken. Gittes gets broken. The system
gets broken. And nobody cares enough to try to fix
it or the people it breaks. They just want their
money. They just want their stories.

 

It’s dark now. As we PULL BACK, as we RISE UP, REVEAL that trillion-dollar landscape built on stories: Bel Air, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Santa Monica; Hollywood, Pasadena, and Burbank, and the vast Pacific Ocean, which SCINTILLATES like broken glass, WINKING at us before it FADES beneath a blood-colored sky.

CUT TO:

*

BLACK and no credits. (No one will take credit.)

It is easy to rage over the inability to forget.

To do as little as possible.

 


I am a multi-genre writer and filmmaker who was assaulted off of the number one sitcom in the country and went on to pursue an MFA to unwrite and unteach the toxic Hollywood narratives. My work can be found in more than two dozen journals. Recent publications include cream city review, PRISM international, Monkeybicycle, The Rupture, and Pithead Chapel. I have received a Glimmer Train Award for New Writers, AWP Intro Journal Awards, and Pushcart Prize nominations. My first collection of stories, The Year of the Monster, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press.

Serpent Song

By Candice Kelsey

I

July. A man in Thousand Oaks confronted by wildlife authorities.
The case: Exotic Reptiles
illegally stockpiled.
Neighbors suspect this guy
may not have permits for all 40 venomous snakes.
Above 100 degree heat
kept in crowded conditions
activity level through the roof. More runs to Home Depot
14 hour day.
Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians rests his hand
on the shoulder of Senior Animal Keeper Chris.
Designer snakes bred for specific mutations
mostly albinism some leucism.
Crossbred / inbred /
Screwed up / blind / jumpy.
The zoo moved the gila monsters to make room
for two black-headed pythons and four indigo
snakes.

II

November. Detroit Police warehouse confronted by the Fair Justice Project.
The case: 11,341 unprocessed rape kits
sitting for years.
Authorities determined multiple rapes
could have been prevented with a CODIS match.
Gang rape of a homeless woman
kidnapping and rape of a young girl.
More backlog
kits from 2009 finally tested in 2015.
Wayne County Prosecutor points her finger
at Detroit Police Media Relations Director Mike.
551 page report by the National Institute of Justice
reveals minimal effort corners cut
vaginal wall / cervical / penile slide /
anal / perianal slide /
buccal swab.
Colposcopy for photos of genital injury
and rulers for measuring bruises or lacerations on
women.

 


Candice Kelsey’s debut book of poetry is Still I Am Pushing (Finishing Line Press, March 2020). Her first nonfiction book explored adolescent identity in the age of social media and was recognized as an Amazon.com Top Ten Parenting Book in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including, Poet Lore, The Cortland Review, and North Dakota Quarterly, and she was a finalist for Poetry Quarterly‘s Rebecca Lard Award. Candice’s creative nonfiction was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She is an educator of 20 years’ standing, devoted to working with young writers. An Ohio native, she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

Image credit: “Eve and the Serpent” by John Dickson Batten, 1895.

Life Is Glass

By Phyllis Klein

 

“There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily,
and so do dreams and hearts.”      – Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things

 

Breaking: Buzz of a bone fractured, burst of a bowl hitting the floor,
boom of a heart splitting. Please like me. A dream as it shatters.
Please think I’m good. Whistle of a word as it severs from itself into the air.
Of a scream demolished.

Moments of breaking: Hand over the mouth, gagging, pushed into a room, door locked from
the inside. Parties, drinking. Why did I do that? The seconds it takes to get
lost. Smash of consciousness as it disappears. Disillusion’s waking
croak. Where are my clothes? Fragmentation into terror.

How it happens: Remembering, forgetting. Was I drugged?
After school, at a party, pungency of impact, taste without
permission. No proof. In the sacristy, in a back seat, a hotel
or a bedroom, did it happen?

Breaking: Dust of collision, whiff of dreams burning, nightmares strike,
cymbals snarl in the brain. I’m repulsive. Floating above it
all in a disappeared body.

Why she didn’t tell: Pretend. It didn’t happen.
No one will swallow it. He threatened, laughed, was stronger, bigger.
It’s my fault. They won’t believe me. Pretend. Have to see him sneer.
Hide it.

What happens next: Cracks. Panic, a plane taking off in the gut.
Armor, as involuntary as neurons saying run, but all there is is a
wall. Looking ok, nobody knows. Get over it. What is PTSD? The thing
that won’t leave, the image, the smell, the taste that’s a plague.

The crush of shame. Lack of sleep. When is it over?
Feeling it, numbing it. Not understanding yet that greatness
comes from damage.

 


Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies, including, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Portside, Sweet: A Literary Confection, 3Elements, The Poetry Hotel, I-70, and the Minnesota Review. She was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forche Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing poetry as artistic dialogue—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels.

Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash.

 

Just the Facts, Please

By Caroline Taylor

 

It’s okay if you don’t recognize the make or model of the car that hit you. It’s okay if you can’t be sure it was gray or silver, and no one expects you to recall the license plate details. After all, they came out of nowhere. Your car is totaled, and you have a broken arm. Of course, you didn’t notice anything about the person driving the car that hit you. You were a victim, and the perpetrator will be brought to justice with very little concern for the damage it might do to their reputation.

You’ll be understood if you can’t be sure the mugger or school shooter had a shotgun or an automatic rifle or had blue eyes or brown or if their hoodie was navy or black or if they were young or old. You’re just lucky to be a survivor. Everyone gets that. And hardly anyone cares what pain or humiliation the ensuing publicity might cause the perpetrator, provided they survived.

But if you’re the victim of a sexual assault, you don’t have a chance in hell of being believed unless you can recall exactly when it happened (to the second, if possible) and where it happened (address, room number, zip code), including if you were raped on the floor of the living room, in a bedroom (which bedroom?), or elsewhere like, for example, an office or a bar or a deserted warehouse (what were you doing there?). If the attack happened outside, you must recall whether it was in a park, in a car, or in an alley (what were you doing there?). If you were assaulted in a rural area, it is paramount that you remember the exact phase of the moon, whether it was cloudy or rainy or snowy, and whether any animals you observed or heard were cattle, sheep, horses, wolves, or coyotes. No one will sympathize if you cannot describe the biota—corn field, wheat field, tree farm, pasture, woods, desert—and, if woods, whether the trees were conifers or deciduous or a mix, or, if desert, whether the cacti were epiphytic or globular or a mix.

Unless you were blindfolded, you will be expected to recall the full name and physical description of the perpetrator, as well as any potential witnesses and whether they (or you) were inebriated. If your inebriation incapacitated you because it was a roofie, you will be accused of poor judgment. You will be required to describe the clothes you were wearing. You must recall what the perpetrator and any witnesses said, and when they said it. You will need to provide their addresses, both physical and online, and phone numbers.

If you cannot recall these details or failed to videotape the attack, you will be suspected of having a faulty memory or making a false report for ulterior motives. (Of course, if you did happen to record the attack, that fact could also be used to suggest the assault was a setup.)

Not everyone understands that you are a victim of a sexual assault. Many people persist in believing you must have asked for it. Sometimes, especially when the stakes are high, you could remember every detail and have all the facts and contact details for more than one credible, corroborating witness, and still be blamed for your role in sullying the reputation of the person who attacked you. Women, and more recently young Catholics of either sex, know that this double standard applies today, as it has for millennia. Unfortunately, those with an outsized sense of entitlement and their own ulterior motives know this, too.

 


Caroline Taylor is the author of five mysteries and one short story collection. Visit her at www.carolinestories.com.

Image by pixel2013 from Pixabay.

Just Like Picking Flowers

By Leslie McGrath

 

The almond wears a thin corduroy vest
that cannot protect the nut. The skin

of a ripe peach peels like a second
degree burn. The oyster

clenches even as
we break its nacreous wings
at the hinge to get at the meat.

When the mushroom man appeared with baskets
braceleted up to his elbow
that shudder morning

he said the girls knew what to do (the best
mushrooms grew on the north sides of trees)

It was just like picking flowers, he said
and girls were good at that. But the boys

he’d have to show.

He led the boys away

(on his knees he showed them)
(with their pants down he showed them)

and we girls filled our baskets     we knew what to do
though we did not know     we did not know.

This was how he separated us.


Leslie McGrath is the author of two full-length poetry collections Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage (2009), and Out from the Pleiades (2014), and two chapbooks. McGrath’s third collection, Feminists Are Passing from Our Lives, will be published in April 2018 by The Word Works. Winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2004), she has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as funding from the CT Commission on the Arts and the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation. Her poems and interviews have been published widely, including in Agni, Poetry magazine, The Academy of American Poets, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Yale Review. McGrath teaches creative writing at Central CT State University and is series editor of The Tenth Gate, a poetry imprint of The Word Works Press.

Photo credit: James Johnstone via a Creative Commons license.