Hallelujah for 50ft Women

by Raving Beauties

  The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.

  He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.

  The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.

  How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.

  The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.

  The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.

  OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.

  Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.

  The rape joke is he called wrestling ‘a soap opera for men’. Men love drama too, he assured you.

  The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.

  It gets funnier.

  The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.

  The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said ‘he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore’, not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!

  The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student – your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.

  The rape joke is that he knew you when you were twelve years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.

  The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming.

  This rape joke is practically writing itself.

  The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.

  The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.

  Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.

  You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.

  The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.

  The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.

  It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, ‘I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,’ which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.

  The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.

  The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.

  The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.

  The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.

  The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.

  The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.

  Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.

  Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends— haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.

  The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.

  The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.

  The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.

  Admit it.

  PATRICIA LOCKWOOD

  The Shave

  That night, he nailed her plaits to the floor,

  split the dull cotton of her skirt and vest

  to shave from her the coppery threads.

  The hair wound around his lithe left hand:

  his right held a blade – snip-snap at the best

  of her golden head and off it came on the bedsheets.

  The severed hair spelled a ladder

  with rungs that could carry a man.

  Smeared and shucked like an oyster,

  bald and grey like gristle, jellied and numb

  as masticated food, she had nothing

  to keep from him and nowhere to hide.

  ZOË BRIGLEY

  Trunk of fig tree from Ses Rossells

  This tree is a grey-faced woman

  who struggles to her feet, one arm

  a broken branch hanging useless

  The wild fire on the hill

  you have escaped for now

  but you are tinder-dry this summer

  Terracing lies tumbled around you

  Earlier we stood in the gloom of the cave

  wondering why we had come

  Inside, the usual debris

  human excrement, tissues, rusting tins

  a goat’s skeleton picked clean by ants

  blackened stones of a makeshift hearth

  To please our father, find his fabled cave

  we had scrambled over boulders

  cut ourselves on razor-grass

  and now your arm is broken

  Two daughters in their fifties

  still trying to prove

  they are as good as the sons he wanted

  We should have followed the example of Vassilissa

  borne the goat skull home

  and let the darkness in its sockets

  blaze our rage, burn down the house

  ANNA CROWE

  Where It Hurts

  Let me tell you what like it is.

  It’s a great muckle hand inside my guts, clawing.

  Or a camshachle crow; beak at my kidneys.

  See the way yon thing over there is moving?

  Well, it moves like that. Like a verb.

  There’s the thump, the weight falling – here.

  Give me your hand; that’s it,

  across my chest. Heavy, like
the battle o’ Culloden.

  Oh Christ yes. Don’t kid yourself; I’m not kidding.

  The body is a bloody battlefield.

  These knees of mine are full of fluid.

  See, feel. Don’t be gentle. Push, prod.

  God, you can almost hear the sea in my knees;

  there’s so much water, slapping, slopping,

  slobbering at the shore. I’m away the trip.

  You could cross the water; you could speed bonny boat

  and still not reach me – bird on a wing.

  My illnesses just keep coming; going out-in, in-out.

  I’ve been sick since time immemorial.

  Since the days of the plague, the black death;

  since the rain of the frogs, cats and dogs.

  I could throw myself up and never come back.

  Chuck myself into the sea, the North Sea.

  The black water would gulp me down, whole.

  I don’t think I’d so much as wave,

  I’m that sickened with myself. Sick.

  Sick. Sick. Sick to death of being sick.

  Always spoiling everybody’s fun.

  Lying down when people are up and about.

  In a dark room, when people are laughing in light.

  I go to the Doctor but what does the Doctor say?

  He looks at me as if I were a germ, a sudden outbreak.

  When did you start feeling this way? he mumbles,

  already scribbling my sentence, my fate.

  What’s the disease inheritance? What’s in the family?

  What odd traits have been passed down? Background?

  Christ! I come from a long line of sufferers.

  We lived with live-in disease-ridden beasts.

  We caught rabies, had babies, passed madness down.

  We clenched our crossed teeth.

  Sick to the back Scotch teeth.

  I could spit my teeth out on stone floor –

  too many scones, treacle scones, fruit scones,

  currant loaf, malt loaf. Crumble. Too much sponge,

  light sponge, heavy sponge. Dumpling. Shortbread –

  too many rhubarb tarts, custard creams, eclairs.

  My blood sugar is soaring. My tongue is so sugary

  I flatter my enemies. My healthy, blooming enemies.

  I say sweet things when I want to weep and spit.

  They tell me I’m looking well; lies – I’m peelie-wally!

  Today people tell the sick they look well.

  A leper never had to suffer compliments.

  If I could say I had consumption, spotted fever,

  cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, apoplexy, let’s say,

  any classic would do: hookworm, bookworm, bubonic plague.

  If my house had to be fumigated, smoked with sulphur;

  if I could suffer a rosie on my face, eggs in my groin;

  somebody might take me seriously, might listen.

  If I could have a day, an ordinary day,

  away from the worry – the body – I would be happy.

  How can I be happy when loss is greeting round the corner?

  Let my body fill with poison, bacteria, culture

  while the workers go to the pictures or opera;

  culture with a choc ice, tub of vanilla.

  Let my body swirl with my hosts,

  let the wee life-forms dance and flounce,

  shaking their big bellies; sobbing, multiplying.

  Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Treponema.

  You clever bastard, bacteria, always a new story.

  Oh bacteria, bacteria; wild, the sea moans.

  Up to here. I’ve had it. Here. C’Mere.

  I’m a guillotine at my own neck. Chop.

  My neck is as stiff as a donkey’s cock.

  I can only turn round this far – look.

  It’s got that bad I’ve started to swear.

  I’ve begun to think in obscenities, I can’t stop – cunt.

  How did I get like this? So far away from myself.

  I used to love ballads, folksongs.

  I will go I will go when the fighting is over.

  But the fighting of the body is never over.

  The stars are white cells. There is no beauty.

  When you are sick like me,

  day in day out, sunrise, sundown, it spreads.

  Like the illness spreads. Across fields, memories.

  My eyes see right through the body to the bad bits.

  The scary bits cowering inside the flesh.

  Growths that people don’t yet know about.

  I can see it coming. It’s not just me.

  The tinge of green, the yellow eyes, the shaky

  hands, the puffy face, the tell-tale signs.

  True, true. Some are braver than me: I’m not

  brave. I’ve gone from one time to another

  puking, spewing; bloated, swollen.

  Sick as a parrot, a gambler, a joke, a dog, a mind.

  Sick as a simile, sick (sic), a poet, a plant.

  Drooping, limp, languid, flaccid, fatigued.

  Bored to death, belching, burping, breaking wind.

  Oh the terrible ennui, the listlessness of illness.

  Oh the repetitive answers: ‘How are you?’ ‘Not so good.

  Could be better. Seen better days, Don’t ask.’

  You can’t say I haven’t tried everything.

  Hypnotherapy, acupuncture, homeopathy, reflexology.

  My tarots read. My chart done. See that astrology!

  Psycho analytical psycho therapy. Alexander’s Technique.

  Moved my three-piece suite. Rubbed seaweed on my feet.

  Something meant to unblock my energy. Synergy?

  Brown rice and bananas for breakfast, dinner, tea.

  Nat Mur? Wasn’t that my remedy? The sea in me.

  My homeopathic personality: I hoard painful memories;

  I nurse grievances; I don’t forgive; I take offence easily.

  Don’t say I haven’t tried to be well. I’ve tried.

  I’ve smiled. But what’s a smile but an attempt to hide tears.

  Many’s the time, I’ve gone out unwell, near collapsing.

  A burning pain straight down the middle of the throat.

  Dead centre. Like somebody’s lit a line of gunpowder.

  The sick headache tightening the screws. Zigzags.

  My moods swing. My sinuses scream. I look like a hag.

  There’s not a pain I haven’t had.

  I could paint the pains on a big white sheet.

  The weary wabbit world of the worried unwell.

  It’s not just me is it? I’m not the only one.

  Were we always this ill? Was I?

  When we die is the sensation heavy, light?

  I’ll die a weighty, hefty, heaving death.

  Other light people around me might take flight

  like graceful swallows. But I’ll be a huge pig

  squealing. A fucking great buffalo roaring.

  What a big bitter pill to swallow

  – will it be red, will it be yellow?

  After all I’ve been through. A great thumping death.

  A fucking great fucking big death.

  JACKIE KAY

  Question

  Body my house

  my horse my hound

  what will I do

  when you are fallen

  Where will I sleep

  How will I ride

  What will I hunt

  Where can I go

  without my mount

  all eager and quick

  How will I know

  in thicket ahead

  is danger or treasure

  when Body my good

  bright dog is dead

  How will it be

  to lie in the sky

  without roof or door

  and wind for an eye

  With cloud for shift

  how will I hide?

  MAY S
WENSON

  Infertility

  Doctors have their ways to investigate: microscope eyes

  that count the glittering fish of sperm, cameras that stalk

  beaded eyes into the gorgeous-red heart of the cervix.

  The ultrasound wand probes, presses, sucks to measure the orb

  of each egg in its sac, while x-rays unravel the womb,

  a stretched concertina that spasms even as it fills

  with saline. Later there’s chemical mingling of your blood

  and mine, to map how XY arms and legs of chromosomes

  embrace or fist. Here I am in the stark, unforgiving

  sonographer’s light: a passage, narrow key, squat cave

  gorged by blood, or just a ripening plum with arid seeds.

  Here am I, a woman not a body, in the snowlight

  outside the hospital, where I smear the whitened sidewalk

  and run with my long legs, my pretty body still unveined,

  still to be spoiled by the loving-soft fat of motherhood.

  So many women come to me saying, ‘I have lost too,

  and this one, and this one.’ So many embryos retreat

  to flesh: the live cell of the mother. Don’t tell me that it

  will happen for me, when the only sure thing is a miracle:

  the sperm nuzzling in its nest and the egg that opens, explodes.

  ZOË BRIGLEY

  Bog Child

  (after ‘Punishment’ by Seamus Heaney)

  She left footprints that I sink into neatly.

  They tell me of her idle dreams

  as she drifted through this place of peat

  and dark pools, a stillness interrupted

  by hooves crashing in the thick growth

  when a man on a white horse

  took her up before him

  and galloped her away from birdsong warning

  of treacherous ground underfoot.

  Patient, the bog waited

  in the knowledge that he’d shuck her