Before the reader embarks on reading these poems, the editors stress that some content may be found disturbing, troubling or even distressing. Sexual violence is an emotive subject, and some writing about rape is as exploitative as the crime itself. Such writing in the context of politics, the media or literature can constitute a “double violation” for the rape survivor who lives the experience for a second time: the experience of “triggering”. Encounters with sexual violence as a subject for literature demand caution, care and respect, but an interrogation of “rape myths” is necessary. The poems selected break the silence of the status-quo, which defines sexual violence as a freak event rather than part of a dominative “rape culture”. This protest is the beginning of a conversation that seeks recuperation, healing and redress.
Please note that submissions are closed.
The introduction to our protest can be read here.
Please refer to our list of International Resources for Rape Support here.
No Traces Left
Rajathi Salma, trans. Kalyan Raman
There are objects
everywhere in this room.
Vases await
the visitor’s gaze.
This bed, which reminds me
of pregnancy
and fills me with fear,
is the weapon my Master wields.
Why can’t this stage mirror,
playing host to my image,
chat with me for a while?
The electric fan, though,
is tricky enough to keep me
from fleeing this room
in search of breeze.
The windows
bring in nothing
from the outside world
these days.
When I rock the crib,
I recall
for no reason at all:
The honey I sipped
through a strange flower’s stem;
the almond fruit
I stole, just this one time,
from Chinnani’s garden;
The time I ate a poisonous root,
mistaking it for a tamarind stalk.
Taj—a child who peered too close
while I sharpened my pencil,
got her face gashed and wept—
is mother of three now,
and supplies milk.
The endless loneliness
of the barren old woman
in a white sari.
What refuge remains for a woman
whose traces are wiped clean?
For whom will the morning sun
dawn white on the low sky?
Even as those who are afraid,
and those who are ignorant,
of death, are dying still,
I have a strange dream:
There’s a newspaper story
of my being raped by some men
while I was walking alone on the road.
This life—impossible to pursue,
with a myriad of lifeless objects
and one man—
goes on regardless,
inside the same room.
From Salma: Filming a Poet in Her Village (OR Books, 2013).
tuesdays
Dorothy Lehane
tuesdays are straight hell,
holding up fury as Wild pallbearers/I tear up his photos
and yet we wait for/ask Who am I kissing,
which poor boy playsHide and Seek,
thumbnails of childhood
and yet we wait for/ask your aphasia to end
we talk Body memory/no, never
talk Fluids, only the direction of feet
his tells/ Warn&change by world
taking you back/this tuesday, I burnt
his photos
your therapist sobs /sees-through your world
an eye/is an eye watching&eight years/too long for rampage
my god,
when you slip into the present tense
your aphasia burns,
the way photos burn/we never talk Fluids
I will burn his photos/destroy all/from your mother’s house/
you will never see/we will never talk Fluids/
each tuesday, straight hell/calling you back from
/your mindsick thrum
Incest
Laura Madeline Wiseman
Though the word is never said, it speaks
from the shadows of the dorm room—like a specter,
like the electricity snapping off—its n the number of times,
infinite and variable, the i small and singular and his.
He says don’t tell. He’s told no one. He holds me
on the couch beside him, the beds lofted
far above us, the thump, thump of bass
of passing cars, the overhead lights suddenly bright,
after I have seconds with the words, years with other horrors,
I say okay, choking on the o,
holding the s far back in my throat for his sister,
like a hiss, and that terrible t, that cross
unbearable, unholy, his wrong.
After that night, he erases me
from his life, imagining that dark e
like a half-eaten apple, like a face laughing
behind my eyes. It was never that,
it was soft, the sound the breath makes when escaping.
Letter to Myself
Dawn Garisch
My darling,
the sun stood over your birth
high noon, zenith tides,
unwanted third child.
I’ve not seen anything like it
the doctor said,
witness to your lack of suck
your starving rage.
My dear child,
embedded in one of many beds
white, like rows of teeth, awake
and hungry during long dormitory nights.
She’ll go far
your teacher said.
Trapped inside a cubicle
you walked into a book.
My beautiful girl,
behind glass and starving
wanting to say yes to dross
lest nothing better come your way
She’s got a cunt a mile wide
a complete stranger rumoured.
Another took you out and raped you.
My woman child,
brewing miracles in the cauldron of your pelvis
out of the dregs and husks of hunger.
Your babies drank rich food
their Buddha bodies turning warm to laughter.
You spoil them
your mother said.
Your wolf hunger leapt up,
snarling, at her neck.
My lover woman,
earth draped round you like a shroud,
your snailfolds fouled three times
your heart three times impaled.
I told them all how much I love you
your husband Icarus said.
You turned away and traveled far
to find a different ending.
My witch woman,
rooting seed into the ground these three years,
staking out a fresh bed under a moon sifting flourlight.
Your belly gnaws and growls its pleasure
at the coming harvest.
Even kings are sacrificed to soil
your unearthed brother says.
Let us feast
on the round of each other.
Myself: my life,
deeply soiled, branching over;
let my dances be windfall
and my words fruit in windfall.
Enough, I say, enough!
There’s abundant food, enough for all
Even for worms when I die.
© Malgorzata Lazarek
The Gender and Law at Durham Research Group
Anna Woodford
are discussing provocation: holding law up to the light.
Their chairs clash at an inadequate table.
From the postgraduate student – her name written in silver
around her neck – to the professor who has brought cakes
out of her backpack – no-one is afraid to use words
like contempt and coercion, or simply to shout
for milk or sugar if that is what they want.
This office is the opposite of a room with a low bed
where a woman might be held down so long.
I want to end with this office. I want to linger here all afternoon.
Published in The Rialto.
Reproduced with the author’s permission.
Prison Art
Marí Peté
Sugarcane hills cradle Eshowe
this warm winter’s afternoon.
I enter into a quiet room,
step closer to counterpoints
caged by frames:
A family holding hands around a table –
yes, here, “The sun does arise,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
On the Echoing Green.” *
I am assailed
by the other painting’s
slashed, dark shadows.
Here, “The sun does descend,
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
On the Darkening Green.” *
Next door a young man’s song
escapes into the afternoon:
Ninety-nine red balloons …
In the Dhlinza forest
duikers dart across the path.
Pause, nuzzle in a sunlight shard.
And I ponder the possibility
of homecoming
from experience, to innocence.
* From William Blake’s poem ‘The Echoing Green’, in his illustrated collection of poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
© Malgorzata Lazarek
The Merchant’s House
Jenny Hope
My Master’s house holds colour.
Within winter’s flaxen skies
the sun hidden, he bids me
touch those sudden bolts of red,
subdued at first, then spilt.
At night the Sleep of Plants
protect their budded young.
There are many faces to green
though each is weak in light.
Ripened men take buckthorn
shade anointed flesh. Lush.
And the sap damp to the ears.
Washed and washed again,
Walwort’s stolen blue fabric
seethed in water, left out to dry.
My firmament unstitched.
I watch for the seam of light
beneath wood. My Master comes
with my sky-skinned elder-black,
starred where the dye’s uncaught.
Originally displayed at the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings in 2012.
Reproduced with the author’s permission.
Water To Quick Lime
Louise Crossley
Dedicated to Caroline Criado-Perez, Stella Creasy, Mary Beard …
A woman who dares step into the spotlight
Will burn in the acid of bigotry and hatred released
As surely as if she were water to quick lime:
A special chemistry ignited by the wrath of inferiority;
A match made in spleen, and delivered,
Like warped Valentines’, by post.
The message? “Shut up, or put out!”
“Step outside the box we have made for you,
We will force our way into yours.
Speak out on issues beyond our reach,
We will haul you down beneath us,
Deny your brain; speak only to your sex.
And speak in terms so violent, so ferocious
You cannot fail to hear how you are disregarded:
How you are feared and hated.
Open mouth means open legs. Quid pro quo.
Quid – cheap; Pro – whore; Quo – ‘Piledriver’.
And we will drive you to silence; pile you with fear.
It’s your own fault; you’ve brought it on yourself.
If you want a place in the world’s biggest playground,
Toughen up. Roughen up. You’ll like it rough.
If I meet you in an alley you’re gonna get fucked.”
One hundred and forty characters the limit of your bravery.
Hidden in courageous anonymity. Spirits, phantoms,
unseen spectres with concealed guts.
Well my balls are on my chest. Look on me!
Daughter of the Morrigan, I feed on ghosts not fear them.
And with each generation, from Eve to eternity, I grow stronger.
So kick out my living womb. Dis-arm me, gag me
And gang rape me with my severed limbs.
I will scream your Banshee’s death wail.
Punch out my teeth to silence me
And hundreds more will spring up in my place.
I am the Hydra: many heads, but one voice.
I am a woman with an opinion.
And I will be heard.
At the Home of a Colleague from the Child Protection Unit
Liesl Jobson
I would like to hang my face, Inspector
upon your wall, beside the carved masks,
reproductions of Africa’s ancients – hunter, warrior,
sage and seer – and deposit beside dried flowers
in your vast ceramic pot, my withered heart,
my brittle bones; so that I might reveal
how scarred I am by the work we do,
a tiger without teeth; scared to confess
that like the aesthetically pleasing
synthetic vegetables in your wicker basket
decorating your railway sleeper patio furniture
my mock skin is too thin.
Your chairs are solid,
like you are, Inspector
when gathering clues of another abducted child,
when noting in cool black ball pen
another infant’s ruptured rectum.
I can no longer keep my face affixed
with idle chatter: Nice day, Sargeant.
How’s the puppy, Captain?
And your diet, did you skip your carbs today?
I need another colour rinse.
My fear, like my roots,
like my sixteen-week bump
is starting to show.
Published in the Mississippi Review.
Reproduced with the author’s permission.
The Biological Fantasy of Weaponry (The Treachery of Images II)
Theodoros Chitos
Oscillatory processes give the impression of precision: all appropriate
capabilities will be applied in a synchronised fashion.
We have been invited to join the inspection teams.
Joint operations will ensure that an isolated population
will be the founding stock of a new species.
Operation Overlord was on the to-do list that morning
but the storm glass was accurate in its forecast:
“the vastness of space will permit a loss of territory”.
We have since been forced to adapt.
We are using night vision to look at our reflection.
We entertain the idea that we are noctilucent creatures.
(A silly fantasy)
In reality we are ghost channels:
You can hear the bang only because we have already heard it ourselves.
We contain noise:
most days we are little more than wind tunnels.
It is only rarely that we fantasize about being
a set of cheap barometers registering the existence of sound
instead of measuring atmospheric pressure.
The sound of a gun going off and the thrush’s song
sound identical under extreme atmospheric pressure.
When the liquid in the glass is filled with small stars, war of the words ensues.
There is a significant difference between mass extinction
and background extinction.
The hard science of the struggle for existence collides
with the activation of the immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome.
The vastness of space will permit memory loss without suffering
a mortal blow to our survival.
Corroded wiring and a ringing doorbell: how can we be possibly hearing
something that should not exist in the first place?
Pigmented tissue and epithelial cells contract pulling back folds
of smooth muscle; it is only then that you realise that the word “reconstruction”
could be made out on the “incised wounds
of the left wrist”.
A Girl Like That
Michelle McGrane
Corrective rape is a hate crime in which a person is raped because of their perceived sexual or gender orientation.
– EE Bartle, ‘Lesbians And Hate Crimes’, Journal of Poverty, 2000
The newspaper report said
the young woman was
repeatedly raped, kicked,
beaten within an inch
of her life, while her mama
cried behind the door.
Two manly relatives decided
to straighten her out
once and for all, give
her strong medicine down
on her knees, the cheeky
cunt had it coming.
A girl like that, what did
she expect? Shameful lesbian
bitch brought dishonour
to the family name,
refused to come round
to their way of thinking.
Published in Binders Full of Women, ed. Sophie Mayer and Sarah Crewe.
Reproduced with the author’s permission.
Spunk
Jacqueline Saphra
(after Jacob Epstein’s Sculpture of Adam)
His cock hangs at half mast; it’s primed to score:
rising, monstrous; nothing like those bland
and flaccid members in rooms 3 and 4.
Drunk on lust, pumped up with blood, he stands
broad on his plinth and howls for cunt. Who’d dare
to leave that call unanswered? This is where
we find the source: that first, primeval sin:
he forced an opening, she let him in.
Later they wrote she asked for it – her pink,
seductive flesh, the bruise and not the kiss.
You ask who wrote those books: who do you think?
Would you, with longing, spread your legs for this,
bear more like him? It seems so far to fall.
Must this man be the father of us all?
Published in Binders Full of Women, ed. Sophie Mayer and Sarah Crewe.
Reproduced with the author’s permission.
Rapping when you don’t know the words, or the stupid things
teenage American boys say in the Place des Vosges. A found poem.
Kate Noakes
I’m like, yeah, like, I actually like, know a lot, like, about art.
She sees the same things as me.
I’ve got a tan line coming on.
If you fall asleep baby, it’s gonna suck.
Why are all the houses here the same?
She say no, when she means yes.
Spell for Healing
Angela Topping
Go deep into the forest of yourself.
Notice the wood anemone, the bluebells.
The birdsong is a cape of spells.
The river sound carries away the hurt.
The leaf mould renews itself
into fine soil to grow fresh saplings.
Peony Moon 