Witness
By Derrick Weston Brown
I was a vessel of “What Abouts”
“Yeah buts” “Why Didn’t You’s”
At 15 no one I knew
had ever been raped.
Rape was trench coats
& Hollywood
& dark alleys
& sitcoms
& strangers
& pasty ass Gordon Jump
on an episode of Different Strokes
Rape was prison “don’t drop the soap” jokes
& After-School specials
& Taimak I mean- Garth who hemmed up
Cree Summer I mean Freddie
in his car until Kadeem-
I mean Dwayne Cleophis Wayne
came to her rescue on that
special “A Different World” episode
that had a disclaimer
Rape was Celie’s handwritten
whispered letter to God and only God
on the first few pages
of Mom’s copy of The Color Purple.
I was certain no one I knew had ever been raped.
Until the Summer
Until the camp
where we learned
so much about
race and gender
disparity diversity
& asked hard questions
& heard hard fucked up answers
& absorbed hard data
we were going to
change the world
school by school
speak on injustice
& then that day
that workshop
that session
when we talked
on sexual assault
& and rape…
& No one I knew
had ever been raped until:
She stood
& she stood
& her
& her
& her
& him
& her
& her
& her
& his friend
& her sister
& my counselor
& his cousin
& her mother
& my friend
& my
& my
& all I can remember is the wail
that went up for everyone in that room
& the knotted arms
& tears & my (redacted)
passed out from the
weight of that day
& I had to be restrained
from fighting
through the crowd to get to them.
But what could I have done?
What good were my hands that day?
What comfort could I offer
wearing shame in my skin.
No more
“Yeah But”
“What Abouts”
“Why Didn’t You’s”
I don’t carry that water any more.
***
Derrick Weston Brown has an MFA American University. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA summer workshops. He has received grants and funding from the Maryland State Art Council and Poets & Writers. His work has been published in many print journals and digital publications such as, The This Mag, JoINT, Colorlines and Tidal Basin Review. His first book, Wisdom Teeth, was released in 2011 through PM Press. Please visit www.DerrickWestonBrown.com for more details.
“Why Didn’t You Call the Police?”
By Tafisha Edwards
Stand. Walk to the closest reflective surface. Open your mouth.
Say Insert name of the man whose breaths you count like sheep
is the one who made you feel as though you were in one of the
movies you watched as a girl—breathless, helplessly aroused,
fragrant with armpit to bramble bush pubic hair pheromones,
that lightning storm turned man, conjurer of misguided black
maternal instincts, that slick mouth liar, that hand that guides you
through memories of your past orange press of bodies (orange press
as in an instrument that presses oranges), cups your ass reverently,
pulls silk scarf moans from your throat, the whole begging string,
the liker of your smart poems, the recipient of your coltish expressions
of desire, your maverick, your heavyweight champion bullshitter,
the million dollar question you refused to answer:
yes, this is the person I fell in love with,
yes him,
he is the reason I didn’t call the police,
I don’t think
he meant it the way came off, I don’t,
I think he fucked up
maybe on purpose,
I do, I think
if we could do it over again,
we would, I don’t want to be
the reason he
I mean I don’t want to be
the reason
I mean please please
please
don’t make me
be the reason
***
Tafisha A. Edwards is the Poetry Editor of Gigantic Sequins and author of THE BLOODLET, winner of Phantom Books’ 2016 Breitling Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in Bettering American Poetry Volume 2,The Offing, Winter Tangerine, Bodega Magazine, and other print and online publications. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s Jiminéz-Porter Writers’ House, and a Cave Canem Graduate fellow. She is currently writing her first collection of poetry, RIOT/ACT.
Baby Girl
By Teri Cross Davis
When she came into this world, my husband
exclaimed It’s a girl! glee met by me, thinking
Oh shit, Freaknik! Please don’t let her do that to me.
Implicit apology gushing down to the elbow of the moment.
Later I think Baby girl, ours is a penned reality,
outside our doors, men use their teeth–
to bite. So, I train her in dresses, skirts,
words like pretty, eyelash, coquettish and smile.
Her biceps grow so large. I lace her with the barbs
most use to harm, but Mommy takes their sting away.
Amazon, my big girl
my strong girl my smart girl all
deserve equal space.
Sunday Night
Because I was small
I could fit in the window’s
bay frame where I threatened to jump
if the frat boy didn’t keep his hands off me.
I laugh when I remember this moment.
Humor the filter over the terror, the tired.
It had been a long three days.
Friday Day
Spring break—all the white kids
were at Florida beaches, the black
kids in Atlanta for Freaknik.
Campus was a ghost town.
We three looked at each other
with a dream. Last-minute methods
of the poor and pretty are many.
Friday Night
It wasn’t the sirens cry that woke me-
the mixtape was too bumping for that,
but the red and blue lights swirling
bouncing off the backseat windows.
Seconds ago, I’d been asleep, now
a white cop had his gun unholstered
and pointed at my head, yelling
Get the fuck out the car!
Welcome to Tennessee.
Three skinny black girls
on the side of a highway at
midnight, the driver’s t-shirt torn,
our only threat is our skin.
Decisions I have made quickly in my lifetime.
$60 in cash, a credit card,
and a car
rented by a cousin,
that can’t go out of state.
Bet.
Friday night/Saturday morning
The black bondsman
has kind eyes. He bails
the driver out, but we
have to be back
for Monday’s hearing.
Sunday Night
The bondsman picks us up.
Drives us to the campus of
University of Tennessee,
Chattanooga. These guys
can put you up for the night, he says.
Decisions I have made quickly in my lifetime, cont’
Kappa Alpha Psi, pretty boys with striped canes on one side,
Omegas Psi Phi, the bad boy “Q’s” that just crossed, on the other side.
Those Q’s look like fun.
Got it.
Saturday Afternoon
A convertible Caddy
cruising through Atlanta
streets sunlight filtering
through treetops, blunts,
burgers, brews all passed freely
Southern hospitality.
Decisions I have made quickly in my lifetime, cont’
Let’s play Spades for shots!
With a partner you’ve never played with!
With some new Q’s!
And they all trying to get their freak on.
You win 12 books in a row,
stone cold sober.
But they ain’t.
So who really won?
Decisions you put off, knowing you should do them sooner than later:
Call home.
They don’t know
where you are.
You need a bus ticket
back to school.
Places where dudes hid:
Closets (2)
Under bed (2)
How many times we were chased through a small apartment?
Just one of us? Or all three of us?
He said, It’s a girl!
You’re a gaping portal
the doctor’s trying to staunch.
Your daughter is placed
on your chest. Her head cranes
to the smell and sound of you,
consciousness a black sheet
fluttering. Every muscle tried.
But now she’s here, the one who’s
been kicking your ass all this time.
The world will want to wound her
will want her bloodied lip and its kisses.
You’ve got to prepare her for both.
***
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, published by Gival Press and winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is a Cave Canem fellow and has attended Hedgebrook, the Soul Mountain Writer’s Retreat, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is on the Advisory Council of Split This Rock (a biennial poetry festival in Washington DC), a semi-finalist judge for the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Out Loud and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. Her work has been published in many anthologies including: Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, Growing Up Girl, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and Not Without Our Laughter: poems of joy, humor, and sexuality. Her work can be read in the following journals: ArLiJo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Delaware Poetry Review, Fledging Rag, Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Little Patuxent Review, Natural Bridge, North American Review, MiPOesias, Poet Lore, Tin House, Torch, and Sligo Journal. She is the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. and lives in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their two children.
*These poems are part of our monthlong collaboration with FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, Rape Can & Must End*
