by Laura Madeline Wiseman
Someone for the first time is being raped
in South Dakota. And after, because there’s always
the after, she finds her way to locks and folds
in upon herself smaller than before and waits.
She has to find the way back without glancing back,
because we all know what happens to women who look back at disaster.
Someone for the first time is silencing a show.
They’re telling New York it’s about context,
rather than money. And the girl, in her own words,
who was flattened for standing is silently raging
in her dead world as some blame it on the Jews, again.
And yes, we know what happens to history when voices are selected.
Someone for the first time is revealing statistics.
That 75% of all G-film characters are male.
This someone, we’ll call her Thelma, says it
teaches girls that they aren’t a significant part
of the living world. The spokesman of these
movies couldn’t be bothered to comment.
Someone for the first time is reading poetry
on a blog. They’re thinking the rules are about context
and which characters are allowed to speak. They’re
wondering whose making these rules, this story.
And the reader, we’ll say she’s you, for the sake
of argument, is picking up a pen to begin to write.
Laura Madeline Wiseman is an award winning writer teaching at the University of Arizona. Her works have appeared in 13th Moon, The Comstock Review, Fiction International, Poetry Motel, Driftwood, apostrophe, Moondance, Familiar, Spire Magazine, Colere, Clare, Flyway Literature Review, Nebula, and other publications. She is the Literary Editor for IntheFray and a regular contributor to Empowerment4Women.
