![](\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_0646-e1485873101603-300x406.jpg\")
Please forgive the back-to-back self-promotional postings, but I am excited! My second book of poems,\u00a0Words for What Those Men Have Done,<\/em>\u00a0has (finally!) found a home with\u00a0Guernica\u00a0Editions.<\/a>\u00a0The book\u00a0should be out later this year. Here are the lines from\u00a0which the book’s title comes:<\/p>\nI don\u2019t remember what song I chose, Please forgive the back-to-back self-promotional postings, but I am excited! My second book of poems,\u00a0Words for What Those Men Have Done,\u00a0has (finally!) found a home with\u00a0Guernica\u00a0Editions.\u00a0The book\u00a0should be out later this year. Here are the lines from\u00a0which the book’s title … Continue reading
\nand it\u2019s been a decade at least
\nsince I\u2019ve told anyone
\nabout my son\u2019s first moments
\nas my son, but they\u2019ve come to me here,
\nin this urologist\u2019s waiting room,
\nbecause I picked up from the coffee table
\nthis copy of\u00a0The Nation<\/em>
\nanother patient must have left behind,
\nand the first article I opened to,
\n\u201cSilence=Rape,\u201d by Jan Goodwin,
\nintroduced me to Shashir,
\nsix years old and gang raped
\nin the Congo. When they found her,
\nshe was starving;
\nand when they found her,
\nshe could neither walk nor talk;
\nand so they stitched together
\nthe parts of her the men had ruptured,
\nfed her, gave her clothing,
\nand that night she slept
\nfor the first time since no one knew when
\nin a bed that was not
\nthe bush the militia had left her to die in;
\nand maybe the tent walls
\nshaping the room she lived in
\nwhen Goodwin learned she existed
\nhad come to mean for her
\na kind of safety; and maybe
\nthat safety was fertile ground,
\nwhere words for what those men had done to her
\ndropped like seeds
\nfrom the mouths of those who rescued her
\nand began to take root.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"