Three weeks ago, as the students were filing out of the room at the end of one of my classes, a woman stopped in front of my desk and said something along the lines of, “So I want to write poetry, but I don’t know how to start. Can you help me?”<\/p>\n
A question like that is not one you want to give an easy answer to, at least not without hearing a little more of what the person who asks has to say about themselves, why they want to write and perhaps even what they want to write about, so I asked her to wait while I packed up my things and we went to find another room. As we sat down, it was clear that my student was nervous about something and I, of course, assumed it was related to her question about writing poetry. It was, but not in the way I anticipated, and so I am going to skip over most of what we talked about to get to the point. After talking a bit about strategies for starting to write, I suggested to my student that she might want to check out a local reading series run by one of my colleagues. It’s a wonderful, warm, welcoming place for beginners to go, both to hear other people’s work and to begin to share their own, but as soon as I suggested it, my students said, “You know, I barely have enough time to work, go to school and go home. I am in a very difficult situation and I know I won’t get the chance to go.”<\/p>\n
Something in her tone of voice told me she was not talking about a merely practical difficulty and so I asked her, “By difficult do you mean dangerous?” She said yes. I don’t want to give any more details, since I don’t want anyone to be able to identify her from what I write here, but suffice it to say that she accepted my invitation to tell me more about her situation, and she is in a marriage that she needs desperately to get out of. Her husband has not physically harmed her yet, but she is afraid of him, and while she didn’t say so explicitly when we talked, I think she believes him capable of killing her if things ever get to that point.<\/p>\n
I am doing what I can to help, and if it becomes possible, perhaps I will write more about that, but what I have been thinking about today is how domestic violence has always been a current running through my own life, from the boyfriend who held my mother hostage with a butcher’s cleaver to my mother’s best friend when I was a young teenager, who was found stabbed sixteen times in the chest with a serrated knife, most probably by her boyfriend; from the woman in whose bed I spent the night–no sex was involved–because she was afraid that if her boyfriend came back he might get violent to the woman who lived downstairs from me who screamed like she was dying when the cops showed up at her door because I called them on a night when I was home to hear her boyfriend beating the shit out of her. (He heard me telling the story about that night to a friend of mine through the way-too-thin walls of my apartment and called back that, now that he knew who had called the cops, he was going to make me pay for it. He never did, but it scared me. He was a very big man.) And then, of course, there was my own too-close-for-comfort-brush<\/a> with being the one on whom someone else might have had to call the cops.<\/p>\n I don’t really have much to say about all this tonight in any analytical sense; it’s just all been coming back to me in waves of feeling and it put me in mind to share this poem, “Coitus Interruptus,” which is from my book called The Silence of Men<\/a><\/em>. There are likely to be all kinds of triggers all over the poem, so if you decide to read it, this has been your trigger warning. The only other thing I will say about this poem is that, with the exception of a few details which I had to alter in order to make the poem work, each of the incidents I tell about in the poem actually happened more or less the way they happen in the poem:<\/p>\n 1.<\/p>\n Naked at the window, my wife calls me policemen. I\u2019m still hard from before she the man is Black, and how can I not as if called to war, as if the lives we\u2019re watching our salvation into a waiting car and drive off the man was beaten in, and then of their driving off When I was sixteen, Tommy back among his things. He placed it to my mother\u2019s life. I wanted over the side of our building with one But I didn\u2019t, couldn\u2019t really: lives with her son in the house she is not at this moment cringing running the way my mother 11:11 PM\u2014and remind myself out the front door, past where my mother sat, the officer making sure Tommy that everything was okay. I wondered against her will?\u2014<\/em>that when I called 2.<\/p>\n Sophomore year, walking the road and then wheels digging hard into driveway dirt her black dress spread around her which were bleeding, and I drove two rooms in a neighborhood house, and he had not hit her, so there was nothing the man her parents picked for her So instead I take from Egypt! I so stupid!<\/em> He fear white American like you.<\/em> I was not a fighter, ask my name, nor I hers, and though Just like the Black woman who lived downstairs against the wall, and his screaming\u2014 that she was being beaten, in bad horror movies a voice on the phone: You know And whatever you do, don\u2019t sign it. <\/em> out of her apartment. No one ever the way Tommy did when he saw me never became words. That tape Do you still want this?<\/em><\/p>\n I never play it.<\/em><\/p>\n Throw it out then.<\/em><\/p>\n So I did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Cross-posted on The Poetry in the Politics and The Politics in the Poetry.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three weeks ago, as the students were filing out of the room at the end of one of my classes, a woman stopped in front of my desk and said something along the lines of, “So I want to write … Continue reading \n
Coitus Interruptus<\/h3>\n
\nas if someone is dying, and someone
\nalmost is, pinned to the concrete face down
\nbeneath the fists and feet and knees of three<\/p>\n
\njumped out of bed to answer the question
\nI was willing not to ask when the siren
\nstopped on our block, but now I\u2019m here, and I see<\/p>\n
\nbear witness? They\u2019ve cuffed him,
\nbut the uniforms continue to crowd our street,
\nand the blue-and-whites keep coming,<\/p>\n
\nin all these darkened homes
\nwere truly at stake, and that\u2019s the thing\u2014
\nwho can tell from up here?\u2014maybe<\/p>\n
\nwithout knowing it. Above our heads,
\na voice calls out Fucking pigs!
\n<\/em>but the ones who didn\u2019t drag the man<\/p>\n
\nrefuse the bait. They talk quietly,
\ngathered beneath the streetlamp
\nin the pale circle of light<\/p>\n
\na word we cannot hear is given
\nand the cops wave each other back
\nto their vehicles, the flash and sparkle<\/p>\n
\nthrowing onto the wall of our room
\na shadow of the embrace
\nmy wife and I have been clinging to.<\/p>\n
\nbrought to my room before he left
\nthe Simon and Garfunkel tape
\nI\u2019d put the previous night<\/p>\n
\non the bookshelf near the door
\nhe\u2019d slammed shut two days earlier
\nwhen he was holding a butcher\u2019s cleaver<\/p>\n
\nto run after him and smash it at his feet;
\nI wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck
\nand crush it in his face, to dangle him<\/p>\n
\nankle in my left hand and the Greatest Hits
\n<\/em>in my right and ask him
\nwhich I should let drop.<\/p>\n
\nhe was much too big,
\nand I was not a fighter,
\nand one of my best friends right now<\/p>\n
\nwhere her husband has already hit her
\nwith a cast iron frying pan,
\nand so there is no reason to believe<\/p>\n
\nbruised and bleeding in a corner
\nof their bedroom, or that she is not,
\nwith her boy and nothing else in her arms,<\/p>\n
\ndidn\u2019t have a chance to run,
\nand there\u2019s nothing I can do
\nbut look at the clock\u2014Sunday,<\/p>\n
\nit\u2019s too late to call, that my calls
\nhave caused trouble for her already.
\nWhen they pushed Tommy in handcuffs<\/p>\n
\nquiet, unmoving, and I did not know
\nfrom where inside my own rage and terror
\nto pull the comfort I should have offered her,<\/p>\n
\ndidn\u2019t trip or run winked at me, smiling
\nas if what had happened were suddenly
\na secret between us, and this our signal<\/p>\n
\nif his had been the voice, calm
\nand deep with male authority\u2014Son,
\nare you sure your mother\u2019s in there<\/em><\/p>\n
\nforced me to find the more-than-yes
\nI can\u2019t remember the words to
\nthat convinced the cops they had to come.<\/p>\n
\ngirdling the campus. Up ahead, a woman\u2019s voice
\npleading with a man\u2019s shouting to stop.
\nA car door slamming, engine revving,<\/p>\n
\nthat when I got there was a dust cloud
\nobscuring the blue vehicle\u2019s rear plate.
\nThe woman sprawled on the asphalt,<\/p>\n
\nlike an open portal her upper body
\nemerged from. She pulled
\nthe cloth away from her feet,<\/p>\n
\nto where her spaghetti strap sandals
\nlay torn and twisted beyond repair.
\nShe left them there. Then to her home,<\/p>\n
\nand I helped her onto the bed
\nthat was her only furniture, and filled
\na warm-water basin to soak her feet,<\/p>\n
\nto report, but she said she was afraid
\nand would I sit with her a while.
\nWe talked about her home in Seoul,<\/p>\n
\nthat she ran to America to avoid marrying,
\nand here she laughed\u2014first trickle
\nof spring water down a winter mountain\u2014<\/p>\n
\nThen: What you think? Can man and woman
\nsleep same bed without sex?<\/em> I said yes.
\nSo, please, tonight, you stay here? Maybe he coming back.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nbut I stayed, and in the morning when I left,
\nshe said kamsahamnida<\/em>\u2014thank you\u2014
\nand she bowed low, and she did not<\/p>\n
\nI sometimes looked for her on campus,
\nI never saw her again. Just like Tommy,
\nwhom I forgot to say before was white.<\/p>\n
\nbefore I got married, whose cries\u2014Help!
\nPlease! He\u2019s killing me!<\/em>\u2014and the dead thud
\nof him, also Black, throwing her<\/p>\n
\nShut up, bitch! Fucking whore!<\/em>\u2014filled the space
\ntill I was drowning. The desk sergeant
\ndidn\u2019t ask if I knew beyond a doubt<\/p>\n
\nbut when she opened her front door
\nto the two men he sent, she shrieked
\nthe way women shriek<\/p>\n
\nwhen they know they\u2019re going to die,
\nand I almost felt sorry for calling.A few weeks later,<\/p>\n
\nwhat\u2019s going on below you, right?
\nPlease, tape a message to the door: \u201cMr. Peters
\nhas been trying to reach you.\u201d Nothing else.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFor a month all was quiet. Then,
\ncoming home early from work
\nI walked upstairs past people moving furniture<\/p>\n
\nwants to get involved,<\/em> right? <\/em>a thin white man
\nin shorts and a t-shirt whispered bitter
\nbehind me. I kept walking<\/p>\n
\ntrying to catch his eye: head down,
\ngaze nailed to the floor, and then he was gone,
\nand the questions I wanted to ask him<\/p>\n
\nwas all I had, till one day,
\ncleaning house, my mother
\nheld it up:<\/p>\n