abuse – Page 3 – FEMININE COLLECTIVE

Against Her Will

February 21, 2017September 14, 2018 Hasty Words

She stood against the wind As it fought to consume her She braced for its brutality And the thick darkness She knew it always brought But it seeped fervently Into all her raw wounds And sapped all her strength So that after a few brave seconds Her valiant effort was Read more

Grace

February 9, 2017September 12, 2018 Jeni De La O

I knew for weeks before he finally told her. His teeth gave him away. I’d never seen them before, then one day there they were. Every time he walked through the door. It reminded my mother of the man she’d met as a teenager, a man in love. When he Read more

My Non-Television Mother and Me

February 6, 2017September 13, 2018 Richard DeFino

Part 1 My mother is not a mother to me like a television mother. She’s more like a friend, a friend of a friend even. She’s the friend whose phone number you always lose on “accident.” When I was young, I used to idolize the kids on TV, especially the Read more

[v.5]

December 20, 2016May 16, 2017 Rachael Convery

give me the gun, my love this is no dance, no punchline blue smoke coiling like hollow wire above the spruce crowns, glittered with the last cold of the cruelest month the tired ladder propped beside the gutter clotted scarlet the knifesong of the wind beyond the grasp of the Read more

After the Murder

November 27, 2016September 12, 2018 Kim Sisto Robinson

“Your coffin reached the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you.” ― Rosamund Lupton, Sister After the murder, my prayers went something like this: “Help me. God, help me. Please, fucking help Read more

The Ocean is a Woman

November 21, 2016September 12, 2018 Megan Garner

The ocean is a woman. She is vast and she is changing, And she does not hide from us All her forms, all her shades, All her faces. But we see her stilled, at times, And we assume passiveness. We see calm waters And, in forgetting her power, We abuse Read more

Burnt Tongue

November 4, 2016October 6, 2018 Paakhi Bhatnagar

Burnt tongue big bubbles rising from his throat. Lean muscles sunk neck snug in-between white burnout bedsheets. Red eyes veins popping morsels stinging, burning teeth and tongues. White hands clutching seats grasping toilet paper. Thick white chunks – stopping words – flowing out of his mouth. Wrapping jeans baggy sweatshirt Read more

You Rise

October 25, 2016October 6, 2018 Kim Sisto Robinson

(For my dear sister, Kay, I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.) Your face is fading. I see shadows of chin, cheekbone, childhood inside my mind. Orange Kool-Aid, baloney sandwiches, Aunt Carol’s peonies like colossal, pink faces thrill us. He loves me, he loves me not. You tell me you Read more