Don't Write a Poem About Rape

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

For the editor who told me

rape is not a fresh subject

(he knows who he is).

Rape is a cliché.

Unless it happens to you.

But don’t write a poem about it

or the editor might say

it’s just not fresh.

Rape is not fresh.

It’s been done too much.

It’s too emotional, confessional.

There are too many words.

People are not shocked anymore.



Don’t write a poem about it

especially if you were in the dark

university parking lot, a little more than tipsy,

and he forced you into his car with a gun.

Dark parking lots and guns are so overdone!

Don’t write a poem about it

especially if the digital time on his dash

was 12:00. It’s too much like the Twilight Zone

especially if those stiff red numbers

still ring in your brain sometimes

when you’re in the grocery line

and you drop everything you got, and the tomatoes

and the peaches, and the can of cream corn

go rolling down the aisle.



Don’t say he drove you down a dead end road.

Don’t tell how he bent your fingers back,

slammed them with the door over and over.

How heavy-handed can you get?

Don’t tell how he took the right to bare your arms,

your legs, your goose-bumpy little nipples,

and when he ripped your shirt in loud red shreds

you were trite enough to worry

what people would think about you.



For God’s sake, don’t say you were a virgin.

Honey, save it for the Movie of the Week.

Don’t tell about the fistfuls

of sand and gravel in your open mouth,

your open face, up your open legs.

It’s just not fresh.

Maybe try a different point of view.



Don’t tell how he held the gun so tenderly

in your ear, under your tongue,

deep inside the stretched-out skin

of your nostril, and you could smell the click

as he cocked it, and you could taste the click

in your throat as he made you call him Lord.

With the right music, it might work for a porno flick

but not for a literary journal.



Don’t tell how you looked up at the full moon

with its mouth torn into a little o

as you waited for it to be over.

Don’t you know the moon is overused?

And there are inconsistencies if you say

you almost laughed out loud

cause you were a stupid little twit who thought

who actually believed the first time would be romantic.



Don’t write a poem about it. Just don’t.

Especially if you went crazy when it didn’t end

and the only defense you had was to black out

and dream the damnedest dreams about a book

you used to have when you were a girl

and you dreamed a little song about the silvery moon,

the moon on the breast of the new fallen road

the Carolina moon that kept shining, shining,

shining on the one who’s raping you.

And when you woke up, it wasn’t over

but the Goodnight Moon was gone,

and you saw an old woman in the distance

come out on her porch to hear

what all the Hell raising was about,

turn out the light and go back inside

and you might’ve thought Good Night

to the Old Lady Whispering Hush,

but that’s too obvious, and anyway

we’ve heard that story before.



Don’t say he dragged you down the road by your hair,

the gravel chewing your back to bits.

Good Night Bowl of Mush, it’s just

the caveman syndrome. Get over it.

We’re sick of wenchy women poets

who are always bashing men.



And the part where he was gentleman enough

to drive you back to your dorm

just doesn’t fit the character.

Don’t say he told you he’d kill you if you breathed

a word, then asked your forgiveness, told you

not to worry and go get some sleep.

Would he really say that?



Don’t say he drove off in a limp line of smoke

as the sun came blinking over the horizon

and you staggered and puked your way back to your room,

knowing you wouldn’t make it to Psychology class that day.

Don’t talk about the guilt for not turning him in.

Take your ass to a talk show or a support group or a priest,

stop throwing the reader around.



Don’t tell the never ending end

of your whiny little poem. Get a grip.

Especially if your roommate laughed and said

Why would anybody want to rape you?

And the counselor said you’ve got to take control

of your life, and your boyfriend tried to understand

why even his understanding would never be enough,

why even his softest fingertips would always be too much.

So you drank yourself into a quiet rage

and now six years later it’s backed up in a corner

of your throat, bristling, sideways, ready to lunge

at the thickest, closest, slickest, hardest vein.



Nobody wants to hear about it anymore.

And the editor doesn’t care that

you’ve already cut half the words

and many of the details.

It’s still too sprawling, too baggy,

too talky, not fresh.

Go tell it to Ginsberg, we’ve

got a comma to perfect.



But if you’re that damned stubborn, go ahead.

You’ll write the poem alone

and it’ll live in a junk drawer

swelling up like a belly

under a pink pile of rejection.

Serves you right.

So stop acting like a bitchy female poet.

It just won’t work. It’s just not fresh.