This week’s challenge at Poetry Thursday was to write a dialogue poem. For some reason I’ve been thinking about an incident from 11 years ago, the rape and brutal murder of an 11-year-old girl by a 15-year-old boy she’d been going on hikes with, including up our hollow. (See my mother’s book Applachian Summer for the whole story.) Unpleasant to think about, let alone to try and write about, but I think violence against girls and women is real and pervasive, and we shouldn’t let it pass in silence simply because of its connection with so much that remains unspeakable.
*
Gram was starting a batch of cookies
when I went out
I’m just going up the street I told her
I didn’t say anything about our secret places
you told you told
your innocent act didn’t fool me
we could’ve gone exploring forever
if you hadn’t told
I wish I’d waited
we had all summer
& I love to lick the batter off the spoon
though she always says raw eggs aren’t safe
the loathing on your face when I showed you
what you did to me
put it aWAY you said
AWAY AWAY
I hear them calling & the name
reminds me of something
maybe that fish that died of loneliness when I was five
I used to press my ear against the tank
sugar & spice for my frogs & snails
we had a deal
I showed you old farm dumps a hole in the fence
one rusty shovel to turn an acre of need
how strange this sudden softness
into which I’ve slipped
fog so thick I can’t make out the trees
Gram’s cookies must be getting cold
I might’ve stopped short of the shovel
if you hadn’t gone crying to Jesus
ignoring me who had given you
all I had
Melody I hear them call
Melody Melody
as if the birds weren’t already singing
as if it weren’t enough
Absolutely chilling.
Yes, chilling is an apt word. I think writing a poem from the criminal’s perspective is so much more difficult–but ultimately so much more enlightening–than writing a poem from the victim’s point of view. We all can imagine, presumably, what it’s like to be victimized…but the mind of a murdering rapist is the real mystery.
What’s the story with the wood thrush? Is it clambering onto an upright surface, like a barn door, or is it lying injured on a horizontal surface, like a picnic table? The vulnerability of those pink legs & one outstretched wing goes so well with this piece.
(o)
I enjoyed this one a great deal Dave, a difficult subject handled with precise grace. Well done.
I liked how you handled this one. It’s hard to write this stuff, but harder to keep it inside.
Very effective poem. Well done!
Disturbing and powerful and sad. Well done!
Brave
Thanks for the comments. I’m glad y’all found it effective; it’s too new for me to have an opinion.
Lorianne – It’s lying on my porch after having given the window a glancing blow. I had just enough time to snap this one shot before it recovered and flew off. So unlike that indigo bunting I photographed the other week, I don’t think the collision did it any permanent damage.
I’ve written a couple other things from a criminal’s point of view, something I learned from reading the great contemporary poet Ai.
the unfocused feel to the stream of consciousness narrative really adds to the chill. Disturbing poem.
Powerful and disturbing piece, it is always fascinating to enter the criminal mind and glimpse their thought process before they committ such horrific acts.
(o)
You capture the innocence before it is shattered. A very difficult poem, but the voices ring very true, haunted and true.
I would agree that the vicitimizer’s voice is very effective here, and all that more difficult to write. I think the stanza with the line about the acre of need is my favorite.
lots of erotic allusion in this…the hollow itself
I read this one yesterday and today; it’s wholly clear and interestingly vague at the same time. Yet I have such a strong visceral reaction–as a person, as a mother–to the whole idea that I can’t untangle it from the poem.
And I keep thinking that I never, never, never would have let a girl of 11 (and what a beautiful, perfect age 11 is for girls and boys, the last sweet hurrah before puberty) go into the woods with a boy of 15… As if that kind of thought could do any good for the dead.
Thanks for these additional comments. Much appreciated.
marlyat2 – I hear you. The sad irony is that she was spending the summer with her grandmother in Tyrone because her mother deemed that to be safer than her home in Croom-A-Coochee, Florida.
Wow. You have a rare talent for seeing past the surfaces of things, and this just confirms it. It’s easy to scream eeevil! and ostracise people… it’s much harder to remember that criminals are also fellow human beings, and most aren’t even outright psychopaths.
Thanks. If you liked this poem, you might also appreciate RAWA Blues, which is in the voice of a biracial member of a white power gang; Moth Man, in the voice of a murderer about to be put to death; and Johnnie to Frankie, among others. As the title of the last one suggests, folk songs are another rich source of inpiration for dramatic monologues (and dialogues) from a criminal’s POV. Steve Earle got into big trouble with “John Walker’s Blues” a couple years ago.
A strong piece and a chilling read.
Glad I clicked the link from Poetry Thursday.
Thanks for stopping by. I read your poem about Elie Wiesel’s conversation with God last night and enjoyed it, though I was too tired to leave an intelligible comment.
Croom-a-Coochee?
Now that’s a conversation-stopper.
Yeah. And as luck would have it, the very first Google result is for the church that Melody attended with her mom.
The photo of the stunned wood thrush is a perfect prelude to the disturbing poem. Good work, Dave!
Thanks, Larry.