Poetic Justice

I wrote a poem this week that I submitted to Rattle's Poets Respond.  It wasn't selected for publication, but I feel compelled to put this out there.  There really are no words adequate to describe what transpired over so many years to so many trusting innocent girls.

With my submission:

I am sickened by the testimonies of over a hundred women in the week-long victim impact sentencing hearing, by the audacity and depravity of the sports doctor, Larry Nassar, and the failure of many to respond to the young athletes in the story coming out of Michigan. I kept scrolling past the live feed on Facebook, but I could only stomach listening for short periods of time. If ever those who have been abused and come forward needed a voice and an ear like Judge Aquilina, it is now. Of course, there are those who criticized her for her actions including when she suggests that an eye-for-an-eye punishment might be fitting, but her capacity to respond to each person uniquely with empathy and encouragement was amazing, and if the survivors need to remember the sincerity of her words as they spend years recovering from Nassar's actions, they are forever archived.

Poem:

Poetic Justice

Leave your pain here,
says Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, a hint
of cowboy boots under her robes.  Her resolve
to hear the unmanicured truth makes me
want to glue myself to her side, nod with her
as she telegraphs empathy and outrage
to each sister in this battalion of survivor warriors.
I want to witness with her as their faces weep
or pale, to rock them close to my ribcage,
then straighten the curve of their weighted spine--
reassure as they scratch at scabby doubts,
and remove the voice’s catch, like a staple hung up
in the throat, as they stand emboldened
by numbers to speak the horrors of their metoo.
Let their voices blister the ears of all complicit.
 
And when I peel myself from the judge’s side,
I want to let her counsel settle in my own sister-cells,
Leave your pain here, and go out and do your magnificent things.
 


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