Snakes in the Compost

poems about rape (trigger warning)

Snakes in the Compost

The man at the bus stop 
became the man who raped me.
Angles of him tripped out mad
into a young girls destiny. 

There are snakes in the compost heap
I nurture them, careful 
to give them their quiet time,
when they shed.

I would smoke here,
casually, as if it didn’t stink. 
Count the teeth of the nettle 
touching my thigh.

Our nest was fur, 
scented with shit-hot skunk.
My wound was so tiny 
in the beginning.

Yes is such a foul word.

Love is a regular disembowelling.

The compost rots down
snakes arrive and live 
lush on the rats 
and the hot ferment.

It´s an adult woman 
that can wrap,
fearlessly, 
a snake round her fist; 
offer it a rat.

What if the answer to all this
is not how to swallow, or hold tight 

but how to bite.

Nettle

 

young enough to say no

and be ignored, enough

woman to appeal

 

I felt myself nettle

 

my only notable part

leaf shaped

 

juicy stem just waiting

to be beaten,

twisted into twine

tied into knots

 

I sting and end in rusty rags

after rape, it´s so bloody

 

there are tears in the skin, and slime

just like the death of a nettle

 

and like the nettle after winter

a new incarnation, come spring


(first published in You Are Not Your Rape - an anthology)

After yesterday's appalling election result from America, it feels only fitting to acknowledge women - many many many women (all? please don't tell me all) that have been groped, abused, raped, invaded in countless ways by men who think they have the right to simply by fact of their masculinity. 

America has voted for a man who 26 women have accused of abuses and their voices are meaningless, still. These are only the ones with enough power to come forwards I guarantee there will be more who have kept their abuse secret, who have held it close to their chest afraid to speak and be ridiculed or worse ignored. There will be women so much in pain they can't speak, there will be women so full of hopelessness they can't speak, and there will be women so full of shame they can't speak. 

In my life so far as a woman I haven't met a single woman who has never been inappropriately spoken to, touched, violated, in ways small to large. 

I used to work in women's mental health and I can say hand on heart 100% of those women had been raped or similar. This is just one shape repercussions will take, invited by voting Trump in. 

We can think of the Earth, then, as a woman. Offered up for war, violence, and for mining, drilling, felling, - rape. 

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