it surprised me, the way it lay there, lifeless, serpentine (of course), river bed without water, lifeless coil, fist of a thing torn apart darkness obscuring whether it was bone crushing or venomous lying dead in the street alone, waiting for answers
Answers or vultures
you float for a time in the “even so,” casually, miraculously, inexorably growing limbs and features and organs, that all-important beating heart. No one tells you meanwhile in “Houston…we have a problem” or that the problem is something you cannot (would not)
unmake you
/girlness /not boyness, your binary /identification /of /gender
Will be enough to terminate the mission
… when all along you have done your best in the beautiful floating weeks of the “even so”
You matchless irreplaceable girl-in-the-now, girl-for-a-moment
Until mission control
Aborts, aborts
Letting you
tiny dancer, rocket girl
Go.
A country, just like a single old-left-foot-house-slipper can be metonymous. This-for that, quid-pro-quo, how-did-I-ever-lose-you?-metonymous. Hit me at 2 am, sharp intake of breath too hard to connect it all with proper punctuation metonymous. I once accidentally cut your hand in a car window metonymous. When I met you I thought you were the crazy one metonymous. Lost in Pittsburgh a million years ago metonymous. With you the reason for years of silence had to be different metonymous.
The countries I have lost all have proper names, stable addresses, no missing slippers. Us-and-them, before-and-after countries cheerfully conventional, intentionally respectful, naturally leery of the once-familiar mendicant whose metonymic wholes have been for good or ill
Irrevocably set free.
his button-down shirt matched the color of his gun and his ten-gallon hat matched his jeans as he brandished his weapon with bravado in the the store-of-lost-things on the corner of the city named for the patron saint of them, poor Native Americans, at some point the irony of namesakes and saints’ days and lost things must have haunted them the way it haunts me as the Nissan with the cat inside next to the bustling night school faces its own lost place on the street named for flowers where a brown bottle will spread its broken pieces like water pooled on the edge of the sidewalk, so close to art, so close to lost on the very edge of the world
orgin: Old French, ieu parti (evenly) divided game
ME- iuparti
The term was originally used in chess or other games to denote a problem, or position in which the chances of winning or losing were evenly balanced, hence-
“A dangerous situation”
From “jeu”-a game which derived from Latin “jest” see “joke” and “divide”
Taboos
200. What common crime against children is universally under-reported?
400. What is the FBI definition for rape?
600. What is Planned Parenthood’s policy on rape and incest victims?
800. What constitutes “consent?”
1000. What happens to fetal remains in rape and incest situations?
Famous Rape Survivors
200. Who is Jane Fonda?
400. Who is Oprah Winfrey?
600. Who is Tim Roth?
800. Who is Queen Latifa?
1000. Who is Lady Gaga?
Rape Victims in History
200. Who was Joan of Arc?
400. Who was Elizabeth I?
600. Who was Virginia Woolf?
800. Who was Lawrence of Arabia?
1000. Who is Maya Angelou?
Feminism and abortion
200. What country has the highest number of gender-selective abortions?
400. What cultural biases enable gender-selective abortion?
600. What medical device is used to determine the gender of fetuses?
800. When is the gender of an unborn child visible?
1000. What are some common social problems associated with sex-selective abortion?
Current Events
200. What famous NYC newspaper reported on a 10 year old incest victim in India?
400. What famous British news agency reported on an Indian rape victim seeking a late-term abortion?
600. What is the common redress for incest survivors in India?
800. What state did the 10 year old incest and rape survivor hail from in northern India?
1000. What survivor counseling, services, and support can a 10 year old Indian rape victim expect from local and national governments?
Final Jeopardy
What are common stereotypes, misconceptions, and prejudices perpetuated in general which hinder the prosecution of sexual predators and marginalize their victims?
they will say focus on the positive they will say at least you gave her a good beginning they will say we have 25 families waiting, better than you like this is some kind of beauty pageant for adoptive families?
…which was a weird lie of sorts…maybe there were 25 families …maybe 5000…in the end it was only necessary to know that it was never about the hypothetical 25, always about the avaricious pair, or pairs, -on-the-ark-come-two-by-two pairs of caseworkers, pairs of administrators, pairs of lawyers, pairs of accountants, coupling, uncoupling back and forth around a central lie, a few broken laws, and Entropy, the Mother-god, chained to the loss chained to the chaos of the loss…of her babies.
what was it, mute, inanimate object perched on the counter in the messy late-night kitchen as she finally sweeps up the spilled beans, tosses them out into the night, contemplates both what usually lurks there and if they will grow, sprout, tangle up into vines, vines to block the sun, spin to the clouds where the approximate-rhythmic giant dwells, mocking science, mocking long-dead Darwin, Glutton-clubbing, maggot-and-squirrel devouring Darwin whose mortal life has coiled to dust but whose immortal one is hot, vivid, fierce
Survival of the fittest…
The last ember in this summer fire so resembles the unblinking moon tonight a slitted serpent’s eye obscured behind smoke-ring clouds spun from the hookah pipe of a caterpillar long-gone-butterfly, God of flight pulling forth a clear phonology from nightingales who form signal fires with words of love and danger for what is in the night.
Years ago I believed the cotton-candy fiction that it was enough for incest survivors, child abuse victims, and rape victims to just tell someone your story.
After 8 years of practicing this advice on behalf of the victims of intimate crime, I can say it is not enough.
If you tell your story, you will be marginalized, ostracized, judged.
If you tell your story, little or nothing will happen to your abuser.
If you tell your story, you still might not be able to stop the abuse…
…ostensibly because it is more fiscally and emotionally economical to ignore abuse than to intervene.
Which is why the recent statements made by American celebrities Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher (about oral sex and incest respectively) are all the more transgressive.
In making these comments both men display a complete disregard for the position of sex crime survivors and perpetuate the connection between anger and rape culture.
Many of us were denied consent in this process. We did not watch either show but were nonetheless exposed without consent to the barrage of media with explicit descriptions of comments laced with both anger and intent to shock and offend.
Shock is a function of trauma. Our minds buffer traumatic events with shock. When we cease to be shocked by what is trauma-inducing, we allow these things to become commonplace, accepted.
Yet it is categorically unacceptable for men of power and privilege to use their position in front of a national audience to transmit language that is verbally abusive and supportive of rape culture.
I understand that both Colbert and Maher disqualified protective language they would have extended to Clinton or Obama (and their daughters) because anger now fuels their discourse on Trump.
However in the process they have exposed a frat-boy, locker room mentality which not only has no place in intelligent dissent, it automatically signals to the already marginalized and disenfranchised victim of sexual crime-“you are not safe here.”
And that is shocking…or it should be.
I am pretty sure oral sex has been a topic of word-slinging for thousands of years.
In order to write this I inventoried some of the times when it seems to have risen to the point of national political upheaval, and some examples emerged fast-
Just to name a few.
Which raises some thorny questions.
Would Colbert have said the victim of the Oval Office hook-up was a holster for a member? Would he have said the same about Bill’s spouse? Or other world leaders?
I doubt it.
I admit that I simply won’t google whether the term Mr. Colbert used for oral sex was cobbled together by him or whether it was a lexical entity prior to all of this.
I kinda don’t want to know.
But what I do want to know is whether anyone has discussed all the linguistic implications of what Colbert said.
What we know from context is-
“Non-consensual” at least for those of us who had to read it in the morning paper.
Which is why I write. I don’t have a problem with Colbert expressing his anger toward the President or disagreeing with him. I have a problem with Colbert’s utter and complete insensitivity to countless sexual assault survivors of all ages and genders who have ever been forced into what Colbert describes…as a joke?
He doesn’t seem to have considered how his obscene and dehumanizing language about a power-uneven and sometimes non-consensual sex act might sound to any rape or sexual abuse survivor.
That, coupled with earlier sexually and racially charged terms for Asian Americans suggests Colbert may share the very same white-man-locker-room entitlement he claims to abhor in the President.
There are clearly many ways to perpetuate a rape-tolerant ethos. I just wish Colbert hadn’t shown us how.
Carrying Light 