The Rape Poem by Joanne Togati

They cried to think of love
for love was no more
every heart once bound by truth
yet truth was no more
lighter hands divided time
And brought a sliding chimera
changing the mood

When the passions and flags came
they skinned her red
The fields asunder a fiercer hue
and the sky a pure white
To show them the outline of fate
a purity consumed by fire

They were connected then
But at the hip
and olive white skins
Lingered beseechingly over the contour of her lips
swallowing her with every sigh

He enjoying every minute
of a faceless woman
of a bound woman
to territory and tradition
and negative plumed fate

Solemn child
in a teenage term of endearment
the middle years still playing songs
on a water logged flute
its tune carried away on the wind

she cried to feel
for what she no longer could
and knowing no one would listen
she died in herself
knowing no one could carry her
she folded
as a leather smock
with pockets for beads and prayers
folded and passed down

Child wounded
yet a child divine
so light the orb around her eyes
but at last
she was buried

by the sand that fell from his mouth
grating against her tarnished skin

she breathed a thousand smiles
to delay all reaction
but he was upon her

quicker than laughter rolling off lips
upon her

striking her down
with a nebelungen smartness

chasing it out of her through the maze of
blood stained rocks

watching her in the wash basin
trickling water with fingers

smelling her out in the green earth
forested among the taller limbs
of her brother trees

but from them
she couldn't hide

He already knew her name

And the chimera
was there in the red
For eternity
the nearby clouds
bringing a heavy torrent
To torment
and
align in malice
the events that would consume her

the faces they all once had
that covered their bones
that moved them from here to there
their limbs like blades
of earth
swinging back and forth
carried away each girl and boy
How far away they came from those first days
those primal ways
How ruthlessly the storm and longing
were exchanged

How she was never a true love

Their future stolen in the hateful affair

Only one of them
blinded to this fate

the man takes a woman
and she is never with child again