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FEATURED POET: Anonymous This month, we are highlighting our major project for 2013. Keys to Silence is the collaborative work of thirteen poets who came together to honor victims of domestic violence. In cooperation with our local YWCA, this collection will be part of an on-going writing project to help bring healing through the writing process to survivors of these situations. Portion of proceeds go straight to the YWCA or battered women's shelter where the workshops take place. We are starting in Yakima and hoping others will light a candle of hope in their area.
An explanation of the titles is here, from the "Note to Reader"
First the participating poets are honored with ANONYMOUS, a word with unexpected power. ANONYMOUS hides planned and random acts of violence and allows violence to continue while protecting unidentified abusers; however, in this book, the word also offers safety for the victims. …victims who try to “melt into the walls” while trying to heal. …victims who believe if they can just go unnoticed for another day the nightmares might go away. These poets write for family members. They write for themselves. They write
using anonymous, no-longer-silent voices.
Join us by checking out your own local YWCA and seeing what you can do help. http://www.cavemoonpress.com/
Anonymous 1
The bruises tell the story
I have bruises all over me,
They all tell a terrible story,
I just wish he’d stop all of this,
And just leave me be.
I’m afraid to go anywhere,
Because I’m hurting so much,
So please don’t get too close to me,
And please do not touch.
Anonymous 25
Silenced City
In a silenced city
the lady in the deep red cloak
leaves herself – finally -
beaten, bloody and naked in the street.
Her bare but steady feet
trace tear-streaked footprints in the cobblestone
that has borne the weary journey
of those few before her who lived to tell.
And the jagged concrete landscape
rises up to wage its losing battle against her glorious dawn.
The angry, primal cries
now ring dark and dead as obscurity itself.
And she walks.
Through broken glass she walks
with gratitude that she can feel at all.
As she finds her way home.
WRITE YOUR OWN POEM:
Thanks to Esther Altshul Helfgott for continuing to advocate for the poetic word. She brought Sharon Olds to mind and the reasons we work toward writing our poems. Sometimes they are for others. Sometimes they are for ourselves. Find a spare minute. Find a scrap of paper. Write your poem.
The Pact
We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the
Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of
cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to
kill herself. We kneeled over the
rubber bodies, gave them baths
carefully, scrubbed their little
orange hands, wrapped them up tight,
said goodnight, never spoke of the
woman like a gaping wound
weeping on the stairs, the man like a stuck
buffalo, baffled, stunned, dragging
arrows in his side. As if we had made a
pact of silence and safety, we kneeled and
dressed those tiny torsos with their elegant
belly-buttons and minuscule holes
high on the buttock to pee through and all that
darkness in their open mouths, so that I
have not been able to forgive you for giving your
daughter away, letting her go at
eight as if you took Molly Ann or
Tiny Tears and held her head
under the water in the bathinette
until no bubbles rose, or threw her
dark rosy body on the fire that
burned in that house where you and I
barely survived, sister, where we
swore to be protectors.
Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of
cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to
kill herself. We kneeled over the
rubber bodies, gave them baths
carefully, scrubbed their little
orange hands, wrapped them up tight,
said goodnight, never spoke of the
woman like a gaping wound
weeping on the stairs, the man like a stuck
buffalo, baffled, stunned, dragging
arrows in his side. As if we had made a
pact of silence and safety, we kneeled and
dressed those tiny torsos with their elegant
belly-buttons and minuscule holes
high on the buttock to pee through and all that
darkness in their open mouths, so that I
have not been able to forgive you for giving your
daughter away, letting her go at
eight as if you took Molly Ann or
Tiny Tears and held her head
under the water in the bathinette
until no bubbles rose, or threw her
dark rosy body on the fire that
burned in that house where you and I
barely survived, sister, where we
swore to be protectors.
Sharon Olds
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