National Poetry Month: Am I going to get raped in the park where I read my mother’s poem by Anne Marie Rooney

Is that why they keep the gate locked so I can know not to enter

I am every girl on a bicycle and my hair feels good

I want to say salty but river beside me oils a coming

The middle of the fear of course every man can kill me

Why can’t I kill them my fever or press that burn in

Always bigger than simple him I hear his travel voice stroking

The round proud gladness like nothing is withheld

Nor will be or swallowed light inside me he

Is all I read and am told to write like him too

The beautiful and unknown! stories men have I unravel

No I don’t I don’t care

But I say so so my Aren’t I destitute glaze is credible

So small bites of heat and james bond theme punching out

Complete me

Empty my gracious cuntly head

So at last I’m earning credit on a tolerance past swollen

Even so I know I could be so much prettier

If I didn’t love my mother I could love him better

But I can’t write like him and he bores me to read and hear

That I am tired and dumb from it I read myself

On the boat later no pricking my tongue if I am quiet

Am I rape or am I

What else

He will come anyway he needs nothing

But the inch I even in my space shutdown give

When he enters my space and gropes a little into it

It grows me smaller like warm butter sliding don

When I decide to stop touching that thing I want

A new word for the fury

Every girl on a bicycle is me

I answer many people still I am answering a look

I script-write the medium and imagine what’s impending

Rape duh

Maybe it’s dark and goo-ey but maybe dead from it

We are having the same dream

All bodies of day

All times of day

Small times and still

In me is a door opening and a man saying I am here

I am every cookie in a small stomach hurting

He speaks so gladly like nothing is withheld

This time I’ll be a bullet and stick my bone into you

And I suppose nothing is.

This poem is from issue 39.1. You may purchase a copy here.