TRAINING
means: you have a master
means they tell you
your fate your job
the position of
your body
and the means by which
they’ll use it
training
means: there’s eight
of them and one of you
taking their turns
in a house where
no one’s coming
home for thirteen
hours means
your age is thirteen
and eight years of
school didn’t
warn you
there’s really only
one lesson
for a girl
they call it: training
say: we ran a train
on her they say
we trained her
and
after that she was
not the same
they’re careful
not to use
your name
think they
know what they’re
training you for
but you’re quiet
trying to
breathe
learning
another lesson
what you
have to do
what you have to
do to kill
the other
what you have to do
to kill the other:
what you have to do
MYTILI JAGANNATHAN makes poems that investigate public and private space, power, gender, property, desire, collectivity, and the conditions of speech. She is the author of Acts, a chapbook from Habenicht Press; and her poems have appeared in Sous Rature, EOAGH, Rattapallax, Mirage#4/Period[ical], Combo, Fanzine, Interlope, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, and Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. She collaborated with filmmaker Sara Zia Ebrahimi and musician Gralin Hughes on Up Against, a 5-minute film screened as part of the “Shelter” episode of the Termite TV Collective. Her writing has been recognized by a grant from the Leeway Foundation and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
Curatorial note: The following poems are a response to a call for poetry about
rape culture for the annual Delirious Advent Feature; the call is in turn an
immediate response to the Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” about rape
culture at the University of Virginia. However, they are also part of a larger
conversation about rape in poetry communities. Curated by Jessica Smith and
Susana Gardner.
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