thundering
toward land, sounding
like a freight train
the fatetrain, monsooning,
pulls back the shallows
exposing the bones of ocean
messages in bottles
tossed overboard
Hwæt!
the chorus swells the tidal wave
tsunamis overcoming gravity
knocking down the doors
blowing up
girls and boys tell me, shame-smoked raw
voices, tears waterfalling,
about the time
IT forced its dick
into her mouth
or his mouth
or their mouth
stopped up the breathing
scared shut the screams
the mouth they want
to eat with, smile
with, sing with, paint
with glitter, lip-
stick, and stain
with grape popsicles
or wine from a dark sea, a mouth
to whisper with love, to open
wide and swallow
what love offers, hungry
always for more.
Apologetically bile-gagged,
they tell me
they know they should feel
grateful
because they weren’t . . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . should feel
grateful
because they weren’t . . . . . . .
“raped”
and they set the word
“raped”
between quotation marks
“ ”
feeling somehow wrong
about admitting their pain
knowing that others
hurt differently
I wasn’t “raped”
locking the word
into a cage
“ ”
filled with legal definitions,
a cage built on quicksand
a shame-forged prison of self-doubt
those marks jail
their truth
behind a false narrative,
an unholy competition
that no one wants to play.
Let the lawyers keep score,
if you must
let the court tally the points
for conviction or against
for six months in the county lockup
six years in the federal pen
Pain won’t be contained
by bars or marks
your scars deserve attention, too.
collective
a what? of teens
a wince of teens
mutter of teens
an attitude, a grumble, a grunt
a disenchantment of teenage girls
a confusion of teen boys
when I talk about Speak to a class
or an auditorium full of teenagers
there’s always that guy
in the back row wearing a jersey
soccer or lacrosse or football
he’s a good boy, he asks
the first real question—
“Why was Melinda so upset?
I mean, it wasn’t a bad guy with a gun
who dragged her down an alley;
she liked the guy, danced with him,
she kissed him,
so what’s the big deal?”
a kiss of boyfriends
a dance of rapists
what’s the big deal?
asked at every kind of school
all over the country
curious boys honestly inquiring
their friends squirming
a quest of knights errant
a smirk of dudes
the question is born out of true confusion
no one ever told him the rules of intimacy
or the law, his dad only talks about condoms
with a “don’t get her pregnant” warning
his mom says “talk to your father”
so he watches a lot of porn
to get off
to be schooled
porn says her body is territory
begging to be conquered
no conversations required
you take what you want
an occupation of men
those boys taught me
to talk about consent
get real about consequences
respect the room enough
to tell the truth
cuz, lordy lord, they need it
other boys pull me aside for a private
conversation, they say one of their friends,
a girl who was raped
is depressed and cutting and getting high
to forget what happened, they want to help
make it better, they want to kill
the guy who did it
they’re trying to be righteous, honorable
but they’re not sure how
a vengeance of puppies
some boys talk about being abused by men
of becoming a locker room target
of never using the bathroom in school
not even once in four years
cuz that’s a dangerous place
if you’re not an alpha running with the right pack
a few became bullies
tired of being teased, beat on,
made to feel small, left out in the cold
they attack the quiet boys
the isolated, who walk in the shadows
some of the bullies are homebred monsters
built by Frankendads, limb by limb
filled with regret and juiced by shame
a retribution of scars
my husband did the math, calculated
I’ve spoken to more than a million teens
since Speak came out, those kids
taught me everything, those girls
showed me a path through the woods
those boys led me
to write Twisted,
my song of admiration
to young men paying the price
for their fathers’ failures
the collective noun I’m seeking is “curiosity”
we have a curiosity of boys
waiting on the truth
and when their questions
go unanswered
the suffering begins for
an anguish of victims
emergency, in three acts
ACT ONE
Once upon a time, a year or so after Speak
was published
a high school in New Jersey invited an author
(guess who)
to speak about a book (you know the one)
Picture this: the author (yep, you guessed right)
takes the stage for the first presentation
and stands in the spotlight
owns the microphone
preaches facts about power
and bodies and sex and violence
speaks up, on fire
INTERMISSION, BUT BRIEF:
One thousand students tumble out
next thousand students roll in
Showtime!
ACT TWO
The author (still me) opens
her mouth, my mouth, but instead of spitting
words,
the fire alarm erupts
silencing me.
It is the only way Principal Principal—
quaking in his shiny black shoes,
either terrified of parents
or guilty as hell—
can think to shut me up
the entire school mingles in the drizzly parking lot
a group of girls gathers
around me quietly, quickly
speaking
of the boys who touch
them in the halls, pull
them under the stairs
rape
whomever they can get drunk enough
on the weekends
the alarm bells keep ringing and ringing and
ringing
but no rescue arrives
ACT THREE
When the screaming alarms are finally silenced
Principal Principal tells me my day
is done
talking about sex
and rape
and bodies
and touching
and consent
and violence
is not appropriate for the children
under his care
because
those things don’t ever happen
in his school
librarian on the cusp of courage
“I loved your book,” says the librarian
“Prom, not Speak.”
I open my mouth to—
“Course I can’t have it in my library,” she adds.
I close my mouth
“The main character,” she rushes on
I listen
“She’s disrespectful to authority,
cuts class, sleeps with her boyfriend . . .”
I wait
“We can’t have those kinds of examples on the shelves.”
Bingo
“And by the end of the book?” I ask
“Well . . .” She touches her crucifix.
I wait
thinking of the miles of empty shelves
in the hearts of her students
“Well”—
blinks her doll-blue eyes—
“she does change and grow by the end.
And the prom scenes were fun.”
Exactly the opening I was
hoping for
now we can have a
conversation
She drops her eyes to the concrete floor.
“I can’t afford to lose my job.”
She runs.
inappropriate dictators
A public school superintendent in Florida
proclaimed
“As of September 8, 2017,
no instructional materials (textbooks,
library books, classroom novels,
etc.)”—THIS “etc.” SLAYED ME—
“purchased and/or used by the school district
shall contain any profanity,
cursing”—REDUNDANCY IS A SIGN YOU DIDN’T
PAY ATTENTION IN ENGLISH CLASS—
“or inappropriate subject matter.”
“Inappropriate”
was when I burst
into flames
Without Freedom of Thought,
there can be no such Thing as Wisdom;
and no such Thing as publick Liberty,
without Freedom of Speech.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1722
So many problems could be solved
with just a teeny bit of knowledge
about American government,
the Constitution,
and the function of the Supreme Court, like
in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26
v. Pico, 457 US 853, 872 (1982),
when the Supremes memorably sang:
Supreme Court precedent
condemns school officials who
remove books “simply because they
dislike the ideas contained in those
books and seek by their removal to
‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in
politics, nationalism, religion,
or other matters of opinion.’”
Censorship is the child of fear
the father of ignorance
and the desperate weapon of fascists
everywhere.
innocence
censoring my books
in the name of “innocence”
will not build the fence you want,
it’s not a defense
against danger or stranger,
the friend or foe
whose hands want to know
the feel of your child
your baby girl or maybe
your boy, a toy for their
yearning for violence, depravity
the gravity
of which will pull your child
into wild denial
her pain untamed
by your drugs prescribed,
or her drugs street-dirty. . . .
nothing can offer relief
from the reality that you
failed and jailed
her happiness in a grave
too deep for forgiveness
the false innocence
you render for them
by censoring truth
protects only you
the word
The opposite of innocence
is not sin,
despite what you’re told
the Bible says.
Don’t get me started
on the real meaning of
“abomination,”
or the contradictions,
omissions the bishops let slide
or translation errors,
or the scribes who lied.
(Eve ate the apple
because Adam
was afraid,
for the record.)
is not sin. Dearly beloved,
the opposite of innocence
is strength.
wired together
Movie shoots bedazzle authors
even one set at a grimy high
school in Columbus, Ohio,
96 degrees
9,000 percent humidity
air-conditioning shut down
for reasons unknown.
I tried to stay out of the way,
slowly melted into a puddle
of author sweat, worrying about making
mistakes, even though the story
was all mine.
The electrician hunted me down.
He looked like the guy in the Dire
Straits video “Money for Nothing.”
’Member him?
He looked like my great-uncle;
big square guy,
head like a paint can,
hands the size of catchers’ mitts,
smelled like work
He found me standing
at the back of the infernal gym
next to a table covered
with cables and rolls of black, sticky tape.
He put down his tools and studied
his calloused hands,
cleared his throat, and whispered,
“I’m Melinda.”
I wasn’t sure I heard him right.
His iron-gray eyes
met mine. Ten thousand volts
arced through the air
then he spoke louder,
“I am Melinda,”
and I could hear
I could see the little boy hiding
inside him.
I stuttered,
twitching in the electric
atmosphere, wishing
I had the right words.
He wasn’t there for a chat.
He picked up a roll
of black, sticky tape
meant for insulating,
for holding things together,
and said,
“A lot of us working on this film
are like her,
cuz, you know”—
he blinked and the tears escaped—
“it happened to us, too.”
unraveling
“I know better,” she said
“I should have known better”
this tapestry of a girl
the fabric of her world
unraveling
she said, “I threw up while he raped me
and he rolled me over
so he could keep going.
Who does that?” she asked
thread by thread stitching
the whos to her whys to the hows
she said, “He didn’t just rape my body;
he broke the concrete
of all the sidewalks, so I trip
when I walk to class;
he poisons the air in the cafeteria
with the laughter of his friends.
I am falling apart at the seams,
unstrung, undone, torn to shreds.”
her new sorority has millions of sisters
stitching thread with needles
sharpened on wombstones
embroidery hoops carved from hip bones
patterns whispered girl
child to girl child
sewing sightless words
coding the path to survival
counting the bodies and souls
with stitches as fine as whispers
but cloth, ill-woven and untested
warp and woof never quite locking
prevent memory’s tapestry
from ever being completed
so
she will change that by mending
the tears, repairing the patchwork
of her life with new patterns,
stronger knots
she’ll pull herself together
become the quilt assembled by loving hands
threaded with intention,
she’ll start weaving her truth
by unbuttoning her mouth
#MeToo
Me, too weak to fight him off
me, too scared, silent
me too, disassembled by the guy
who . . . . . . . . .
mis understood
mis taken