Survivor’s Guide to Sex by Elizabeth Hoover
“Survivor’s Guide to Sex” by Elizabeth Hoover Two days before the declared frost, cold snap. You wake to find the fields a bank, stalks lost to morning light. Walk through wheat, stems snap, brittle with cold. Look into an ear: each kernel is brushed white. You notice details like that more often now—how, when wheat bends under the weight of ice its hair catches in the frozen mud and can’t yank free, even in...
What Is the Medicine for Rape by Trina Porte
“What Is the Medicine for Rape” by Trina Porte last week at the acupuncturist while tiny needles helped my qi unblock the doctor told me that the chinese view the inside of the body as a garden with a waterfall flowing through next week i want to ask him do the chinese have a word for rape what is the character for it and does a spot in the garden die or does the waterfall wash it away ...
Comfort Woman by Tanya Ko-Hong
“Comfort Woman” by Tanya Ko-Hong On August 14, 1991, in Seoul, a woman named Hak Soon Kim came forward to denounce the Japanese for the sexual enslavement of more than 200,000 women during WWII. They were referred to as “Wianbu” in Korean and “Comfort Women” in English. 1939, Chinju, South Kyangsan Province Holding tiny hands fingertips balsam flower red colored by summer’s end ripening...
The Untenable by Cynthia Reeser
“The Untenable” by Cynthia Reeser A rusted gash in a frigate’s flank. Her screaming mouth. Rope uncoiling from tree. His tightening grip around her throat. Her pregnancy a hint of a lump. Rotten Easter eggs, unfound in July. His red swollen face, a Goya of anger. Spine of redfish, played like a xylophone. Her head hitting the floor, unconscious. The hot press of the mattress. The thrum and thrum and thrum of...
Body Parts by Margaret Stetler
“Body Parts” by Margaret Stetler Leg lies on the rug like a dog’s gnawed bone. Arm against the bookcase. Foot in its slipper beside the chair. Under table glass, head with blood-matted hair. The house is dark, vulnerable to sky and earth the way the sleeper is to wakeful, watching ones. In the dream I ride with a stunt driver, a man I love. He speeds to the edge of a cliff, has seconds to brake. I count on...
What We Call Love Is Seldom What We Fall Into by Sandy Gillespie
“What We Call Love Is Seldom What We Fall Into” by Sandy Gillespie ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Sandy Gillespie’s Artist Statement: I am 66. • At 41, I moved alone from San Diego, California, to Fairbanks, Alaska, to get my MFA in poetry. • I learned to backpack. To listen hard for moose and bear. To dress for -‐35 and watch, at midnight, for the...
What Sets Her Apart, Part II By Tania Pryputniewicz
“What Sets Her Apart, Part II” by Tania Pryputniewicz Looking at Käthe Kollwitz, Women and Art, UC Davis In Raped, trampled leaves, vines. Käthe left one bloom intact. Black center tethers one unified petal. Viewer stands at girl’s bare feet, skirt taut over thighs, white flare where naked breasts disintegrate under sun’s sudden path unobstructed...
What Sets Her Apart, Asks Jayne, After Reading Another Guinevere Poem For Me In Massachusetts by Tania Pryputniewicz
“What Sets Her Apart, Asks Jayne, After Reading Another Guinevere Poem For Me In Massachusetts” by Tania Pryputniewicz (Poet to Jayne) The company she keeps: Arthur, his sorcerer sister, their bastard son. Merlin. Her view of the rain stippled Severn, orchard’s apples rinsed silver by dawn, the blue smoke of burning peat. Hair framed by candleflame, cobalt iris of eyes,...
Won’t You Be My Valentine by Elizabeth Hoover
“Won’t You Be My Valentine” by Elizabeth Hoover By now you are just the space my lover touches me around, his care unwittingly conjuring you. You left an opening to talk to me—your voice speckles through—but I miss you when I feel unknowable, a tongue too swollen to tell. My body is a dream I once had of freedom, a foreign thing that eats silver and loves spiders. How can I tell my lover of my craving for...
What We Talk About When We Talk About Father Rucker by Cheryl Buchanan
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Father Rucker” by Cheryl Buchanan Kim says, It’s like I’m still suspended, when Jenny asks her to recite it. Each year it’s harder to believe. Which doesn’t mean they can’t remember. Leigh keeps talking about horses, their wide infantile eyes. Kim brings old photos, where even grown-ups look so starchy, squeaky clean. Like those school uniforms he stuck his hands up...
My Brother by Katharyn Howd Machan
“My Brother” by Katharyn Howd Machan My brother lives in a box of cigars. Each day every day he lifts the lid to peek at the world and hopes the world won’t notice. Bristles grow on his face and throat. He smells, fears soap. He never throws his loose hairs away but carefully keeps them, dirty and dark, in the teeth of a green plastic comb. Long ago he spent years committing incest. I survived but we never...
Tijuana by Holly Norton
“Tijuana” by Holly Norton Southern California unwinds like a filmstrip Unreels when we cross the border in the mint green Edsel Men run into the street to meet my father and me Wave their arms and say, “Senor! Senorita!” He gets out to make a deal Fifty dollars for new upholstery Twenty for a new set of rims He ends with a joke about us getting married They laugh. I look at the ground. On the street I look at...
There Is More Light Every Day (A Song for Uneven Fingernails) by Anna Hundert
“There Is More Light Every Day (A Song for Uneven Fingernails)” by Anna Hundert there is more light every day and it is helping me to see my edges, see where my body ends and the world begins you see, this separation (here I, there world) is needed for the infant mind to grow and I am just learning there is more light in my eyes and on the ends of my eyelashes on days like...
How To Love Your Body by Kelly Cressio-Moeller
“How To Love Your Body” by Kelly Cressio-Moeller 1. Polish a bronze moon-disc, see yourself reborn through Egyptian eyes. 2. Marvel at how the shape of your ears resembles handles of a porcelain cup. 3. Recall night swimming—the first time tight-laced limbs learned buoyancy in the dark. 4. End the day on a sleigh bed for adventure while dreaming, dip sheet corners in jet—trace arrows, fire, and...
Molding by Sokunthary Svay
“Molding” by Sokunthary Svay “…the apsaras always appear on the stone in the same pose derived from that of a flying figure…standing isolated from the world on a lotus blossom or flying in the open air, they are the divine symbols of joy.” -Maurice Glaize, Angkor: A Guide to the Angkor Monuments Cambodian girls in roadside salons idolize them in curls. The eternal female sculpted for worship, protector...
The Photographer’s Model by Jeannette Miller
“The Photographer’s Model” by Jeannette Miller The hard, round lens moved toward me, its eye growing smaller the closer it came. You pictured me until the numbers wouldn’t escalate to hang on a white wall, a row of trophies, their corners pinned securely, the...
My Body Is Not Your Politics by Hannah Bonner
“My Body Is Not Your Politics” by Hannah Bonner My body is not your politics. On the bus, in the Laundromat, in the classroom, on the stained mattress, stuck in line for groceries, pressed together, like petals in a book, waiting for the sign “walk” in green, my body is not your politics. In the dark tunnel of the alleyway building with the tumult of a March wind, among the blue fissures of the call light on...
A Number of Blue Women by Anita M. Barnard
“A Number of Blue Women” by Anita M. Barnard I They cannot help it; they were painted like that, nude, in that unshrinking shade. Their bodies round, revealed, as ripe as the red and yellow fruit around them, vibrant. The air quivers clear between them, the curving bodies of the fruit and the women. This one in the corner, near us, lounging, displays her round and ample backside. The shades of blue arcing in...
Why My Body by Antonia Clark
“Why My Body” by Antonia Clark Because I’ve made it a temple and worshipped at its altar. Because I’ve stuffed it with secrets and let it make me sorry. Because it can’t follow directions, a slave to delay and meander. Because I’ve tried to conceal it, desiring the bodies of others. Because I’ve scraped and scarred it, teaching it needless lessons. Because it’s the seed of...
Coming Back by Beverly Fontaine
“Coming Back” by Beverly LaFontaine The rosemary thirsts. The brown rice is mealy. A spider spins a universe between a leg of the piano and a shadowed corner of the living room. Get sick, stay in bed and that’s what happens. You become a ghost in your own life. Bits of me are floating back like moons to their mother planet. No one else has this exact memory of honey on toast or this bitter echo of a...
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Witness Nov 29, 2024
