Dead Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

OK,
one last poem
or whatever this is.
This one about the woman
running the garage sale
in Venice, CA,
who told me,
a stranger,
who wasn’t even buying
any of her stuff,
that when she was a girl
her father and two brothers
regularly f...ed
her
and that her whole self worth
rode on
how good a f... she was.
And as she told me this
her Korean-American gf
stood and listened
when she wasn’t collecting
cash
for household
goods.

I wondered
why she felt safe enough
to tell me,
a stranger,
all this,
though I knew the answer
perfectly well.

There’s a network
of us
out there,
we don’t wear dog tags
but we know
who we are,
and occasionally
we trade
war stories,
though we aren’t
(our molesters would really prefer
we didn’t)
supposed to talk about it,
not even if they’re
dead
to us.