Rape Camp
for the victims
She was young, barely 14,
breasts slowly ripening
that warm Balkan day, a day
when her future still was a carpet,
rolled out to greet her.
We’re taking you to your parents,
the soldiers said when they grabbed her.
Grabbed her and her friend from the fields.
Birds disappeared. Clouds rose into dark
peaks. A sudden wind raised her hair
where the soldiers had uncovered it.
She still wanted to believe.
Just up those stairs, they said,
pushing them, raping them
on the rough wooden floor.
When her friend wouldn’t stop screaming
they did it again with a bottle.
A broken one.
It took her two days to die.
No nice Muslim man will want you now,
the soldiers said, You and your half
Serb bastard son.
They cut her just for fun,
forced her to strip, to dance
for them nude at night, to do other
things she’d never imagined, cutting
her again if she refused.
She was the only survivor out of twenty
packed into that room.
Sometimes she thinks of before, of blue
skies, birds singing above her, golden fields.
She thinks of the husband she’ll never have,
or make believe babies tight in her arms.
Sometimes she pretends she’s a statue,
scars roping her body like blood congealing
down dead legs and arms.
Most of all, she tries not to scream.
____________
Time’s Sand
Those of us from a certain era
applauded Burt Reynolds when,
as a playgirl centerfold, one hand
draped casually over his penis in his nudity,
he broke the previously unbreakable
barrier of only nude women, breasts
like balloons, lying in magazines.
calendars, cards, porn movies.
What older female doesn’t remember that photo?
Who cares if you didn’t like Smoky
or car chases or would never sing
I will always love you like Dolly Parton
in that little whorehouse he saved.
He came through for the flip in status
of all women where it counted.
Living in Florida, I met him
at a waterway arts and crafts show
not far from his Jupiter farm.
Loni, his wife then, and I shared
the same gynecologist,
charismatic doctor to the stars.
I suspect she impressed him
far more than I did.
But age and loss bent him over.
He called for Sally, his true love
as he weakened, but she didn’t come.
His grip had been too tight.
Friends dead, women no longer
beating a path to his door
he became like the rest of us,
our feet dragging, beds empty,
death’s sickle hanging lower each day.
He’s gone now.
Our own clocks tick faster,
more noticeable in the empty space.