A Copy of Diving Into the Wreck

It shoots out like a ninja star,

 

like the time I talked to my aunt,

a landlord, about one of her renters—

a woman’s husband died

from drinking too much, this time

 

a bottle of rubbing alcohol,

somehow,          the woman said,

into the light with her jaw wired

from behind a screen door. It flew

 

across the room

and stuck in the wall like a machete in a watermelon.

I got the feminist power fist tattoo

on my arm shortly after—

I said it was to remind myself to always

make feminist choices.

But, I didn’t always make feminist choices.

 

My models and their contradictions

hovered over a remote. I moved

out for a short while at sixteen, where I was raped

by a cruise worker visiting town.

 

But, I know the women in my life

have been raped, and for a moment there

the meander of men continued,

and if that confuses you,

you don’t know much about rape.

And now, I have to do all this

struggle and shame

even with the tattoo. How

can we go on like this?

 

I dove in and it’s nice. It’s there

because I need it, the work of diving—

 

just the work

over and over again.


Also by Laura Minor

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