Text version

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.