Zoe Canner
how many women murdered by their boyfriends over thanksgiving is too many?
drawing a line from
these terrible murders
and in one case
disembowelment
over our uncomfortably outdated
genocide family holiday weekend
to the outpouring
of women’s voices
in response to sexual assault
and harassment
is so obvious and clear
to a great many of us.
and others of us
refuse to allow
connections, and cultures,
and atmosphere and influence
to be real in a striving for
individual – ‘i had no idea’
‘he worked independently’
‘just following orders’
patterned event.
i draw a straight line.
i draw a straight line from
clarence thomas to trump
to ratner to singer to lauer
to ailes to nassar to horovitz
to the need for panic buttons for
housekeepers in the hotel industry
to all the men who murdered
their wives and girlfriends
over thanksgiving
last year alone.
Zoe Canner is an angry, anti-racist, 3rd Generation Holocaust Survivor. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Naugatuck River Review, The Laurel Review, and Arcturus of the Chicago Review of Books. She is an alumna of CalArts, Directors Lab West, and The Home School. She lives in Los Angeles where she indulges in hilly walks at dusk when the night-blooming jasmine is at its peak fragrance.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.