Survivor Looks at Leda and the Swan
There is the sound the vase would make if you filled
it, the pour awkward and unsure where to go.
And then the trembling of your hand if you lifted
it and tried, like you were begging, to drink.
You would find you were unable to. You would
find, instead, the fresh milk all over your clothes.
After all, the vase is unpredictable.
Never having been built to be used. But then
again, neither were you.
Imagine the neck
as a handle, the hair as a way to position.
A swan’s head circling half of the vase’s cropped rim.
The other half as the head of a woman. Look closely
at the design here. Keep your legs still while you look.
Where the two figures end, minute sketches
of ducks are persistent. The base unsturdy,
half finished, half cooked. The woman’s eyes looking
out without detail, or perhaps just in thought, holding this
moment under the spout to see if, somehow, it
was real. I think it’s terrible, this vase Gauguin built
on his island. It can’t stand up without falling.
It could barely be a vase if it wanted to. Unable
to hold anything but the space it has kept in itself.
Survivor
after Max Rockatansky
There’s a muscle in my hand that only flexes
when a man explains to me the circumstances in which a boy can be raped.
By an older boy, he says. Or by a boy the same age who is
stronger. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.
Explain it again, I say. But slower this time.
I want my hand to hear each word that you say.
It’s a new muscle. One I have built over time.
When I put my arm through a glass door,
when I wake up retching on the floor of the subway,
when I name my abuser, Kate, in my poems.
Bite me and you’ll taste the fat of the
swans I have eaten. Put your finger
in my mouth and you’ll feel that my teeth
are all gold. Coyotes run from me. Dogs kneel
and carry me on their backs to their kill.
I am what you’ve heard of, what you’ve
dreamed of and seen in your films. My new nerves
ache to show it. How I can take apart your
car and make it into a series of weapons.
How I can take a single drop of water and
make it last twenty-three years. Survive me, and
I’ll show you the spot where she did it.
I’ll tell you how it didn’t matter that I was stronger or
that I was a man or a boy. I’ll tell you Kate
used to just be my sister’s name. And because of my rapist, it will
never mean sister again. Even now, there is a radioactive rattlesnake
the size of Manhattan that is barreling toward us.
He’s going to eat us both and I am not going to die.
I’m going to gut my way out of its neck while
you lay there, helpless and swallowed.
I survive like I can’t help it. Like
it’s my job, motherfucker.
I can’t believe I have to explain this
to you.
