Poetry Prayer #21

A day late again, but I never claimed to be perfect, right? (If I did you had to know I was joking. Big joke.) Our Misti passed this poem on to me today. It's an absolutely brilliant piece of writing and speaks to so many things so eloquently without getting shrill or beating a point into the ground.

It's called Rape Joke and it's by a woman named Patricia Lockwood. I've never heard of her before but I'll be checking out more of her work, for sure. It's a new piece and I don't think it's right to reprint the entire thing here. Please click the link and read it in its entirety and then pass it along. Everyone should read it.

There is, of course, a trigger warning. It's a poem about rape. An important poem about rape.

Here's an excerpt:

...
It gets funnier.
The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.
The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!
...