CONTENT WARNING: The Sharon Olds poem in this post contains images of sexual violence, rape, and murder.
Sometimes, writers write about things that are difficult. There are some poems in my journal that will probably never see the light of day until after I’m gone from this realm. Either their subject matters are too personal, or they contain information about loved ones that I simply can’t share.
Sharon Olds is pretty fearless in her writing . . .
The Girl
by: Sharon Olds
They chased her and her friend through the woods
and caught them in a waste clearing, broken
random bracken, a couple of old mattresses,
as if the place had been prepared.
The thin one with straight hair
started raping her best friend,
and the curly one stood above her,
thrust his thumbs back inside her jaws, she was twelve,
stuck his penis in her mouth and throat
faster and faster and faster.
Then the straight-haired one stood up—
they lay like pulled-up roots at his feet,
naked twelve-year-old girls—he said
Now you’re going to know what it’s like
to be shot five times and slaughtered like a pig,
and they switched mattresses,
the blond was raping and stabbing her friend,
the straight-haired one sticking inside her
in one place and then another,
the point of his gun pressed deep into her waist,
she felt a little click in her spine and a
sting like 7-Up in her head, and then he
pulled the tree-branch across her throat
and everything went dark,
the gym went dark, and her mother’s kitchen,
even the globes of light on the rounded
lips of her mother’s nesting bowls went dark.
When she woke up, she was lying on the cold
copper-smelling earth, the mattress was pulled up
over her like a blanket, she saw
the dead body of her best friend
and she began to run,
she came to the edge of the woods and she stepped
out from the trees, like a wound debriding,
she walked across the field to the tracks
and said to the railway brakeman Please, sir. Please, sir.
At the trial she had to say everything—
her elder sister helped her with the words—
she had to sit in the room with them
and point to them. Now she goes to parties
but does not smoke, she is a cheerleader,
she throws her body up in the air
and kicks her legs and comes home and does the dishes
and her homework, she has to work hard in math,
the sky over the roof of her bed
filled with white planets. Every night
she prays for the soul of her best friend and
then thanks God for life. She knows
what all of us want never to know
and she does a cartwheel, the splits, she shakes the
shredded pom-poms in her fists.
It’s a traumatic poem, full of ugliness and cruelty. Yet, there’s also something hopeful in it—the girl survives, brings justice against the attackers. She doesn’t forget her dead friend, but she’s also full of gratitude for the fact that she survived. She is alive despite the violence committed against her.
Thank God, most people never have to experience that kind of violence. However, each day the United States seems to be creeping closer and closer to authoritarianism. Judges and mayors are being hauled off to jail simply for criticizing President 47’s policies. (Last time I checked, it’s still legal not to agree with an elected official thanks to this little document called the Constitution.)
Now I’m seeing rumors of President 47 suspending habeas corpus, which guarantees that anyone detained by the government has the right to challenge their confinement in a court of law. If habeas corpus goes the way of the passenger pigeon, then you/me/anyone can get thrown into prison and left to rot simply for saying something negative about Agent Orange. For all I know, the FBI already has a file started on me.
Yet, I’m not going to shy away from being critical of a federal government hell-bent on destroying democracy. Truth is truth, and I will speak it regardless of what kind of MAGA Kool-Aid you may have swallowed. The truth came out during Watergate, and President Nixon had to resign. The truth came out during the Army-McCarthy hearings, and Joseph McCarthy ended up being censured by the Senate (and losing most of his political clout).
Truth is power, and that’s why schools and universities and libraries and museums and journalists are currently under attack in the United States. An uneducated public is easier to control and manipulate. Think about it. Joseph McCarthy had the country believing the Lucille Ball was a communist. President 47 calls the January 6 insurrectionists “heroes,” and suddenly we’re giving taxpayer money to the family of an insurrectionist who was killed by Capitol Police during the attempted coup.
The only people who should be afraid of the truth are those who are propagating the lies. That’s it. I’m pretty safe, I think, because there’s no way President 47 reads or understands poetry.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a not-very-nice guy, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem where a famous person from the past visits you in the present. What message does s/he bring to you? What does s/he want to tell you? Write a series of questions for this person and imagine the person answering them. Write down everything s/he says. Use the best answers and lines from this exercise to write a poem about a topic this person brings to mind. After you complete your draft, research this person and find an actual quote to use as an epigraph or weave into the poem.
Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins
by: Martin Achatz
“I will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, talking about Joseph McCarthy
You have to love your enemies,
he says, just like Jesus. He sits
on his front porch, remembers how
skunks jumped in fields when
he pumped bullets into their asses,
how satisfying the smell was
as it settled on him like Hail Marys
after a great confession. They were
everywhere, in basements, under
porches, behind outhouses, inside
corn cribs. Sneaky bastards. His eyes
get all misty as he recalls Old Lady
Schmidt bringing him warm blueberry
muffins one afternoon after he wiped
out a stench of seven from her farm.
She shook my hand, thanked me.
He wags his head, spits.
Christ, the blueberries were big
as horseflies that summer.
