One of the hardest things to do when reviewing a book is to read other reviews. I typically don’t because it can be intimidating or distracting. However, I was curious to know what others had thought of this series of books and interestingly more has been written about Sarah’s Earthen Witch Novels series than most […]
via Candice Louisa Daquin Reviews Sarah Doughty’s Just Breathe — Go Dog Go Café
It was raining the day the movers truck pulled up
piling furniture into the back, exposed to wet streets
everything dirty and unfamiliar
when you take your safety out of its box
when you unlatch your secrets
and expose the insides of a locket
sticky mouths seek to further that exposure
until nothing of your peace remains
but the belly of your secrets on display
as if you were sitting in class without underwear
as if the abuse etched in your soul were a t-shirt
as if his fingers weren’t in the dark but had been
dipped in luminescent paint and everywhere they went
left their grimy imprint / yet you think
this horror may have been the very best thing
as wretched as exposure may taste
at least it wouldn’t be a case of disbelief
how many women does it take?
for one person to not hesitate
how many must say;
he did this / that happened / we are not okay
because of this / why do I have to prove / with gore
and soiled soul / the truth / why isn’t it sufficient that I say
why why why
did he lay a hand on me?
how many women does it take?
a juror in the Bill Cosby case disclosed the reason for his guilty verdict;
I believed he was guilty because he said he had drugged girls
hearing it from the horses mouth got my vote
are we bidding on a horse? Did you check the inside of his mouth?
what of the SIXTY women who spoke?
their voices do not warrant proof?
were people just speaking words?
to deaf sign posts stating;
move on / get over it / don’t make a fuss / why should we believe you?
one person has lied before / you must be lying / that’s our automatic default
what hope then
for one girl?
one single soul
violated in the dark
of a house when all is moved out
and she is left inside a shell, within a shell
the echoes of trucks taking memories
somewhere else
how many women does it take?
to be heard.
I said no and you said yes
The first time was before I can remember
adults do not have dominion over children’s souls
but that’s what happens when you touch a child and cause her to be unwhole
the second time was in nursery school so I suppose your foray of my body had begun
as I emulated what was done
in the back of a toy caravan with my pretend boyfriend and he liked it a lot
made me feel dirty though, I did not know what that meant at the time
seeded a doubt in the core of my person, like a rod of copper slowly turning green
the third time I lay face down on a dirty carpet and three boys played marbles across my back
they got the idea from a porno mag their father hadn’t hidden very well
and their kid sister watched from the doorway, and I told her with my eyes, go to your room or you will be next
I said no and you said yes
it became as normal as something bad can be, I wanted to see her, so I had to cross the gauntlet and you were the gatekeeper
nobody believes you when it is easier to disbelieve and go on thinking respectable people don’t lie
you taught me to hate games shows as they were our background noise
and grandma would come in laughing and I’d see the guilt in her eyes
sacrifice the daughter, sacrifice the child, sweep the dirt underneath the bruises of generations
at nine I fell in love for the first time with a boy who wiggled above me but he of all, respected my desire to be unmolested and we hung upside down from the monkey puzzle tree holding hands
I said no and you said yes
James Brown was your name like the singer, and you didn’t take no for an answer
you climbed my bunk bed and pulled down your pants and if the door bell hadn’t rung you would have got your way
I wonder who came after me and if they were saved by the bell?
I said no and you said yes
yes yes yes you know you want this
no no no I really don’t
but you asked for it, you tempted me, you flirted, you caused me to have a hard-on, this is YOUR FAULT
I kissed a boy in the garages outside school and it felt dirty and wrong because it reminded me of what others had done
before I made decisions of my own
I said no and you said yes
I felt guilty about touching myself because of the Jahovah witnesses and the Mormons and the teacher who stapled my confession together and said we won’t talk of it
when I tried to tell her, this is what happened to me
and you didn’t feel guilty about playing yatzee and karatee on your father’s bed with the nylon sheets and the little bobbles they made when you made a tent and put your fingers in
and you didn’t feel badly when you lied and said you would only touch and instead you went too far and before I knew you were pinning me against a table
I said no and you said yes
children who are violated don’t always know what’s best for them
they are broken and they are scattered and they are stomped on and they hate how they look when the light is on
but they want to fit in and they want to be normal and sometimes in trying they get it all wrong
the neighbor told my parents; your little girl is using bad words and teaching my boys how to curse
and I said fucking hell what does it matter?
but it did, it mattered a lot, to stay in the confine of childhood and not grow up
because growing up meant it was real and you had to deal with it and whilst you were a child
nobody believed it could happen anyway so you could pretend it did not
I said no and you said yes
yes yes yes I know you want to
no no no I really don’t
and my second boyfriend said he wouldn’t go too far
but he did and he did and he did
and I ran through the streets holding myself up and I shouted to the trees that had fallen because of the high wind
why do people pretend? because I didn’t understand and it was a language impenetrable
but I was not … impenetrable
I was just a place of conquer
I wanted to find a lock and keep myself closed
but they kept battering down the door one after the other
because patterns are sometimes all we have to show
for the cycle of abuse
I said no and you said yes
the last time was in a public street
dragged off and soon the roads diminished and the woods were thick
he moved like a silver fish cutting his way into my secrets
I lay staring at the knife
he told me, I won’t cut you if you are nice
I was very, very nice
no no no
yes yes yes
the policeman said; I have to ask, it’s my job, did you want to have sex with this homeless man?
and I pulled up my torn skirt and my ripped hose and my shredded blouse and my dismembered bra and my bloody underwear and I said
if you can even ask that question
you will not recognize justice if it comes
no no no
I said no and you said yes
the last time and the first time and all the rest
when children become girls, become women, become less
than the worth that is owed them
yes yes yes !
I told the cheongsam wearing beauty
You are very kind
But I’m not sure there is such a thing
As humility
When our world is made of capital
For only recently
I heard a conversation
On the end of poetry
The deceivers, sharp, pointed folk
Trussed in their certainty
Poetry was neither vocation nor career
But some beast of the very idle
Something retired people and students dabbled in
Not a grown up or grown down job but
Proof of latter life impressionist indolence
Yet, like land auctioned off and trees torn down
We cannot know of the beauty once standing
Without the witness of a scribe
For more roads without direction we take, employing compass
Without translation, our journey remains an enigma
Like redheads, freckles and those left-handed
Doomed to scorn and ostracized days
They paint the world with much needed alternatives
As poets write out everything within us we couldn’t see, lending words to universal feeling
Yet, relegated by the long tongue of capitalist decree
Those who configure feelings shall never be
The vaunted or the high priest, followed in obedience
It is our nature to ridicule what we do not understand
Absurd yet with mis-hap sense, justifying how we turned out
No choice, no desire for question
Some grow up longing to be dentists, chartered accountants, bankers, zoo keepers
And those of us who from earliest moment
Wrote what others dismissed or feared to touch
Carry a strange torch
Maybe the value is not always clear
Surely easier to pour scorn upon, the role of poet
Than to give thanks
We have not in our collective greed
Forgotten the art of being
When frail turn reminds us
Being human is more
Than cast off rind
But the potency of citrus
In a land that had never before known
Tropical fruit
Make me
she said
clenched teeth
fists placed outside knuckles or you break a finger
go on then
make me
she’s been practicing her outrage
knelt too long in good manners and stiff skirts
if you come for me
I will respond in kind
they could see in her eyes
she had nothing to lose
it happens like that
they can take you apart piece by piece
until scar tissue fuses
you are a deformed version of yourself
scaled in defiance
so best you stand aside
she’s cutting her way through her own war path
if you play with matches
better know how to extinguish a fire
before it devours
just as goodness is inviolate
until natural order is reversed
then angels become feared
devils lose their advantage
over weak men who would
enslave the future to save themselves
not her
she is clad in the keloid of her injury
teeth clenched, eyes flaming
make me if you can
when there is no high road
to claim your justice
burn burn burn
For Nathalie & Eric.
There’s a look in her eye
it says I am strong and I do not know
yet how deep this goes
to join with protective arm in the moist earth those who stand before and after
except there will be no after
my child lies sleeping eternal sleep, my womb will no more facsimile
it ends with me
I stand alone when you pass and I remain when you are gone
It is the sorrow you always saw in my eyes
I knew
the price of freedom is to be alone at the last hurdle
a strange familiar pain, turned to in twisted recognition
strength usually accompanied numbers, other families look on
you can hear them with their dismay
she is the poor one who inherits isolation
and what I have learned, is the truth of this and the lie
you may share a name, a legacy, a generation or a string around your finger
and still within you
nobody
nobody thinks to inquire in a room-full of noise
you may be speaking loudly, no-one will listen
captivated by their carousel of cacophony
so when you said I was formed of my choices
you were right
and what you missed, was your own price
for we all believe ourselves immortal to obscurity
it is my fate to understand this
it is your torment to chase
the dragon you seek and avoid
he will never let you catch him
you will never discover why
the borderlands of your mind
make enemies of love so well
Oh justice
you queer creature
when did it become
permissible
to be so clouded?
if I were a storm
I’d gather your secrets
and rub them clear
from obscured tempest
capturing land with fists of murder
Oh justice
they ask me
what I want for my future
it’s not me I am concerned for
but the child who is let-down
before he begins
pain the innocent suffer
just for resisting easier path
sin is the great reaper
so many follow and worship
it becomes hard to see clearly
what is right anymore
oh justice
I would leave this world now
my last breath
if you could grant a restoration
put order back
arrange the books on the shelf
so people will come and read
truth may be dusty
but she is sorely
in need
I used to say
O talk to me
open your maraschino mouth
pull the glazed words out
until they come undone
now I say
keep quiet
stay absent
I have found what I didn’t yet know
standing on the other side of rebuke
we forsake our blazing joy
under the suffocation of those
who demand all of us
and none of us
I spent a life time waiting
to stop hating myself
when the girl with the sparrow in her limbs
took me by the hand and bid me dance with her
entreat I may rinse my history in her cupped smile
held under chin like buttercup tells fortune to
gilded child, with her smoothness and her beguile
latching emptiness and filling it with stars
bursting over us like white flames caution the acrobat
to walk steadier in the marsh of emotion
I didn’t think I could start over, my chapter was
dulled by the passage of hands holding me back
she knew I could
when I lost my footsteps on the other side of rebuke
she picked me up, held me still until my heartbeat
slowed and the music filled me anew
history said
Go back
years ago
Go back
you are not wanted here
this is not where you belong
walking behind yourself
catching the depth of your tread
hang up your effort
string failure to dry
you leave your hope here
take one bag
get on a train
without a ticket
without windows
and in your musty closet
transform
to the dark bird you were
before you knew to fly
to the passenger who came with outstretched arms
seeking relief and quantity of blood to let
so all that nourished from you could
fling you away once done
the fille cruel said …
if I could plunge you head first
into the brink and keep you there
until you swallowed your dreams
amidst river water
I would have done so
but I am paying the price of karma
for destroying you I must suffer
though I claim to be a woman of God
pressing my palms together as tight as they go
all this that comes now to nail me shut
the consequence of my cruelty
you may lose your way
you may be set out without light
holding an empty bag told
again
go you are not welcome
but I shall die first and certain
without anyone to witness
for those who seek to harm
pay the longest price
for their one-way ticket
the survivor said …
when I learned to dance
at first my feet hurt
they did not fit narrow confine
bleeding through satin
staining effort
blistering I rose and challenged
the nails the stones
dancing over hurt and beyond
you cannot harm what you do
not understand
the broken will rise
taking their music sheets to far corners
letting go of caged songs
fed by the nourishment of your need
to damage and quench them
their feet shall defy the pain legacies in wood
long the sound of blood shall fall
after they have moved the world
turning in time to the beat of
desire inhabiting the stage
go on, further than possible
entering hallowed ground
where all who stumble climb back
toward the master who believes inviolate
his dreary manacle
made unsteady by their motion
they are
you are
no more than breath left behind
when the dance is done
and lights dimmed for tomorrow
we shall again begin
without you
such is our dream
woven throughout movement
in swaths of redemption
All those who have gone before
stand behind with arms crossed
asking not to return
withholding themselves
long I felt their push
leave us
go on
on to the future
we are but transient wonders
signing the way ahead
maybe you thought us unconditional
such things are only in your head
fiction as the lullaby soothes
surfacing over truth in reluctant plaster
truth is
we were no more than a moment in time
chaffing against northern wind
not friends, despite collected words
just language, ticked sayings, signs and symbols
laugh at your faith in us
we had none in you
still the journey is undertaken
still the road steps ahead heavy skirted and leaden hearted
watching stars for their map
only disregard stared back
pain in the dying glitter
of false promises and forgotten allegiance
until my own walk journeyed
beyond those memories
of closed doors and turned heads
names I knew once as well as my own
palms with futures I thought part of hennaed auburn
they packed their bags and returned
to the spaces in their universe
not inhabiting me
with time the absence
once raw and gaping
healed
I realized then
some people exist
to set you free
in bidding goodbye
cease to feature
like crossroads
stand solid and permanent
until they are passed
by westbound train
TheFeatheredSleep 