Poetry Suite by Adira Bennett
“girl
survives, seeks grace”
Poetry by Adira Bennett
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THE WAY I’VE NIGHTMARISHLY DREAMED
You are the slaughtered lamb’s bone
caught in my windpipe. You are the reason I
strip my spine from the muscle of my back each
morning and wrap its chain round my knuckles,
knot the cord round my throat. You are slices of
strangers’ bodies: hairs on the back of a hand,
gut puffing over a meticulously shined black leather
belt. You are the hackle of the axe splitting green girl-
wood; you are the army of painted lead toy soldiers in
the pockets of all my coats. You are the broken-open
pomegranate staining my sheets and the ruby
seeds I pick from between my lover’s teeth.
You are not my hunger, but you are the plate
of rice and beans, cold and gummy, uneaten.
You are my belly gorged on blood and silence.
You are on the other side of every shower
curtain and night-black window, saying, “I will
always be here.”
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SWALLOW
Come on, baby. Stroke my big, fat
ego. Suck my sins. Swallow that
shame. You like how that tastes,
don’t you? Don’t you talk back.
Talk dirty. Tell me who’s your
God. Make me believe. Make me
comfortable, commendable. Eat my
insecurities. Lick them dry. Lick my
wounds. Fix them. Fuck me,
fear me. Tell me how big my
power is. Get on your knees and
pray to me. Make me important.
Good girl. I want you to call me
blameless, call me justified, call me
complete. Tell me you like it.
Call me baby. Take care of me.
Heal me. Cure me. Blow me
out of proportion, into a man
beyond men; a man who people
surrender to with open legs, shaking
like homeless dogs. I am shaking
but it’s a secret. This is our secret, so
swallow that shame until it’s gone.
Swallow my shame. Tell me
it was yours all along.
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THE SECRET
I couldn’t keep it inside myself anymore, so I
punched a hole in my skull and drained the pus
and blood of it into a jar. When the jar began
to rattle and crack, I wrapped it in duct tape, but
I should’ve known: it burst. I couldn’t wash its stains
out of my dress. My mother stopped speaking to me.
And so I gave up on taming it. It settled to sleep under
my pillow, soon sprouted babies from its sides that
crawled into my shoes and pockets like slugs. It
grew and grew. Now, it keeps me in a jar. Carries me
in its satchel from place to place. Some days, I crash
my knuckles to the glass until they split and bleed.
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RUSSIAN DOLL
I. A hundred men split
her hips, until the place
between becomes a pink
scar. She paints her eyes
back into her head each
morning. Goes to school
and keeps her skinny
thighs locked, loses her
fingers like flower petals,
next her arms. Tender
green wood gone hard
shell. Lacquered. Hollow.
When you click her halves
together, you can’t even
see the parting to pick
open with your fingernail.
II. She is under her mother’s
desk; a furtive and fierce
foxchild with a Barbie doll
in her paw. In her dark
den, she peels Barbie free
of clothes and scrabbles
at the blank plastic between
her legs, twists her limbs
into twine, spits into the
staticky plastic hair: you’re
a dirty little whore and
dirty little whores get
what they deserve.
III. She swears
she will never
give birth
to a daughter.
Won’t even
plant a garden.
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MUSEUM
My outside isn’t open
anymore. Cells stitching
into scars interlock
their tiny fingers; prickle
like freezer burn. I am
a museum. This is how
the body heals. This
is how deeply atoms ache
to encompass one another,
how deeply humans ache
to be encompassed,
how the compass
needle tattoos one
who is lost. I am
a museum, but not
an exhibitionist, not a ticket
seller, not a woman standing
at her own door to ask
for donations.
There is no café.
There is no gift shop.
I am the artifacts.
There is no main office.
I am the curator. I am
a museum. This is how
the body heals, how
girl remembers, girl
survives, seeks grace.
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GIRL’S FAULT BECAUSE
girl’s fault because “keep your knees together” (Judge Michael J. Savage)
girl’s fault because girls should “adjust to their environment so that they don't provoke
people into committing unwanted acts” (Governor Fauzi Bowo)
girl’s fault because “because the victim wore very, very tight jeans, she had to help him
remove them... and by removing the jeans... it was no longer rape but consensual
sex” (Italian Supreme Court)
girl’s fault because “a drunk can consent" (Justice Greg Lenehan)
girl’s fault because girl met her rapist under “inviting circumstances” (Justice Robert Dewar)
girl’s fault because “wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the
fly?'" (defense attorney Steve Taylor)
girl’s fault because “if you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have
happened to you” (Judge Jacqueline Hatch)
girl’s fault because if girl “doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts
down” (Judge Derek Johnson)
girl’s fault because “it appears that she was inherently abnormal and had sexual instinct
from her childhood” (Justice Sadhana Jadhav)
girl’s fault because girl “was probably as much in control of the situation as was the
defendant” (Judge G. Todd Baugh)
girl’s fault because rapist “is an extraordinarily good man” (Judge Thomas Low)
girl’s fault because girl “wasn’t the victim she claimed to be” (Judge Jeanine Howards)
girl’s fault because girl
girl’s fault because
girl’s fault
girl
girl
girl
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Header image courtesy of Cristina Troufa. To view her Artist Feature, go here.
Adira Bennett (pen name of E.K.) is an independent artist/writer living in New York City. She is currently studying forensic science at a criminal justice college, and she hopes to have one day petted every dog in the world. She can be reached via her personal website (adirabennett.com), and you can follow her on Tumblr (adirabennett.tumblr.com), Instagram (@adirabennett), and Patreon (patreon.com/adirabennett).
