The Cliche of Rape

The Cliché of Rape

When God makes dust of our cooling magma,

musingly crumbling the last

galls and studs of our being,

the only place we can go if we’re not

destined for hell, or there already,

is purgatory—for certainly heaven’s

no place for a film of dust to settle…

                                                                                Denise Levertov

                                                                                A Heresy

I wonder if we all start noticing it

                in the middle

of some cheap cliché: the way our breath

is taken

for granted when we draw it in

to scream, the way we’re held down under the water

                of our mother’s gaze

                her hate a hand

                on the back of our neck

                though we couldn’t have known that,

                we couldn’t, not in our brain anyway
                that it wouldn't save us 

and that it had already made itself

the dog with the bone and heavy chain

                it had already dug

                in the clay a short ways away

                from its leaky house

and eventually, fatigued and mean

                it bit       through                 my          cheek.

And he’s with me

                to this day and I’d say maybe

other dogs see it and back away

                like I’m someone

                else’s piss pole.

Don’t you want to know the moment

                we go off on our own

                (even though we couldn’t know it

                                at first, but after the second time

                                                it’s a sound

                                                                practice)

and for once not need

to trace the trail back to that wreck

                of a hospital bed

                                                neck

                                                eye

                                                cheek (yes,

                                                and elbow

                                                knees

                                                                and I did see

                                                                                the crotch

                                                                                though not

the way you may believe it: it was

between the sheets he’d made me

                and screwed me up

                and made me wait

                                and maybe it wasn’t the hot water

                                washing him down my legs

                                and the pink poesy’s pattering the lip

                                of the imitation brassy capped drain

               

                I take it I take it I take it

                                from him and my face

                                it changes, and the place the dog came at me that day

                                                sagged the way a haunch sags

                                                at the regular customer, a hatred but a resolve it’s coming at me

it was later he’d come alive again,

that dog,  

he’d come alive again and made the meat of my cheek

his clay bed

                and he stayed there

                his quiet growl every time he was touched

or got up into the wazoo

                                and no I’m not without defenses

                                I’m not without my own nose going down (how do you think I know

                                                                                                                                what happened

                                                                                                                                to her?)

                                                into the cellar of her

                                                hurt

                                                to know this was how they took her too and turned her out

                                                and did her up

                                                and did her in

                                                                there’s nothing like it

nothing like that smell except maybe a reflection in

                                the inside of a washed out Thanksgiving

                                bird, her cavity clean

                                but something is between

                                the rib

                                and the liver

                                and it lingers

                                above my lip all day

                                                like all dead things

                                                right?  Like all fucked things

                it holds its own, it makes it

                                broken though it is through and through

                                you can’t ride it out like some wind blowing.

                                                               

                                                                It’s in you now girl.  It’s in you now

                                                                buggered as you are.  Own it.  Own it.