by Jamie Hood
III.
Let me try again
You know this story
We all do
A girl walks in to a wood
A girl walks in to a room
A girl walks in to a cave
a lake
A girl walks in to a tomb
And there girl is Our is-ness
inflames Or this is what we are
told Facticity of girl as spectacle
—from the Latin spectaculum a public show
from spectare to view watch behold from specere to look at
How is it only women are able to make spectacles of ourselves
Haven’t we eyes Haven’t we a lust for a touch
of occasional razzle dazzle
In the height of the July heat one summer I was R**ED on a busy Boston street
This body’s forehead smashed against historical cobblestone
An other’s arm choking the body’s throat
The body’s tongue tasted its own beauteous blood
The body’s mouth became a great O
The cobblestone thought to swallow the body but the body’s O mouth
was simply too damn wide O salvation
Wonder: how many spectators spectated doing nothing & nothing done
Think: my body has always been a public space
Rephrase: this body has always been a public space
Think: I cannot call it mine
Elaborate: there is nothing in experience that is a lie
Know: I am no metaphysician
On my bad days I am a biological persistence
This too can be holy
While the crocus is a favorite among gardeners it can become a weed in rock gardens
its resilience imagined as an unfortunate circumstance of mute stubbornness
Kitty Genovese was R**ED stabbed left for dead
Hers was a populous apartment complex We thought someone else would call
Her assailant returned for seconds R**ED her again stabbed her again
A neighbor held Kitty in her crooked arms at the end Bless her
who ensured a final touch that was kind
We not all of us can count on that
Everywhere men stare so wetly
Wolfman eyes in dark A man or a wolf
you see it doesn’t matter
I do not need to tell you
matter is from the Latin mater
mother source
origin of material
I say wolf or man isn’t of any matter
in a quite literal sense They appear
all over without seeming origin Who
is your mother Man Tell
who gives you Source
A girl walks in to her/self
& a man follows
This is the whole point A man
walks in to a girl seeking
stillness finding
girl
He stills her Renders girl
quiet O conquering impulse
We are instructed that this is
historically accurate Should I say usual
We are the spoils
——–We didn’t know
it was wartime or else wasn’t
War is man’s god in perpetuity He creates holes
in order to fill them with himself We are not asked
to believe or not to believe but to be simply cowed
This is called duty
Do not ask me to define this
A man threw a dictionary at me once
I began to vomit words all day long
It never stopped I have a sickness
If you read this you will be
infected
I am sorry please do not
mind It doesn’t hurt
much
IV.
Every day I wake & am still in America It is awful
It streams in through my blackout curtains I am an insomniac
I hear men even in my dreams They preside over me & I
must call them your honorable et cetera They are anointed
in the underneath Appoint one another endlessly Confirm
each other endlessly Demons on this earth every one of them
I must tell you I’ve seen their sin up close though shorn of yellowed eyes
& protrusions their horns I am trying to understand my rights
Each day I am reading the Constitution to see how many amendments
tell me to get R**ED again Please say you hear me say my heavenly body
say there is another way to break from this wood each day
I am waiting to be the girl who walked into a where & never came out of it
This is the way we live now
It always was
I told you you know this story
Jamie Hood is an ex-doctoral student, ex-hooker, and current insufferable Twitter e-girl. She’s busy finishing a book-length hybrid manuscript called RAPE GIRL. Most recently, other selections from RG were published by The Rumpus. She lives, writes, dog moms, and bartends in Brooklyn.
Two earlier sections of RG have previously appeared in Protean.
