Andrena Zawinski
Wounds That Bleed Inside
after Marge Piercy
I have survived being raped
and did not become frigid
or impotent or a manhater
tethered to shame and guilt.
I have managed to pull away from hands
grabbing my breasts
after an 8:00 a.m. art class
and did not stop drawing.
I have slapped them
moving up my skirt
in the student union
and still drank my coffee.
I have survived them all,
the dancer who held me too close
with his manhood pushing hard
into my thigh in a slow grind.
I even survived
scaffolding whistles and cat calls
frotteur on the rush hour train
peeper at the window late at night
but
I have not survived
the wounds that bleed inside the fear
of walking a forest trail alone
or along the neighborhood beach
or into some hotel elevator
or a knock at the door late at night.
I have not survived
the fear of a man
turning his body
weapon against me.
—Submitted on 06/27/2020
Andrena Zawinski is the author of Landings (Kelsay Books, 2017), Something About (1st World Publishing, 2009), and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, 1995), as well as a number of chapbooks. She is also editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2012). Zawinski’s poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, Slipstream, Rattle, Many Mountains Moving, and other journals.
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