WEBVTT

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This next poem, unfortunately,
is topical again.

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I've always felt that one
of the major victories

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of the feminist movement,
women's movement,

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was to help our
culture redefine rape,

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and to bring a new
understanding about what

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sexual violence really means.

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But if you've been
following the newspapers,

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it seems we're back
to square one again.

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And as we live now much
more deeply embedded

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in a global community,
we see that rape

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is part of women's
lives in every culture

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and in every country.

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I was teaching women's studies
at Cal State Northridge

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when I wrote this poem.

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And it's called "The Test."

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My students bend intently
over their desks,

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the test questions swirling
around their heads, the answers

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gathering or slipping away.

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I have taken them to the
wall in The Handmaid's Tale,

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where Margaret Atwood
hung the bleeding bodies.

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I've taken them there and forced
them to touch the red-brown O's

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of mouths, now silenced.

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I have held in front
of them the photos

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of the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory

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girls flying through the
air, unnecessary angels.

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I have held the photos
before them, like a Veronica,

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holding the sweated and bloody
face of the Christ printed

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on her scarf.

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Touch these wings, I demand.

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Touch the concrete before
these women smash against it,

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like bags of groceries you'd
spilled going into your house.

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They are full of life,
not bread and wine.

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My students bend
over their tests,

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intent on making
the right response.

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It's required that I
test them this way.

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But I would rather send
them in the patrol car

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to the frat house
with directions

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to write up the rape, touch
the semen of a coed's ass.

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How many kinds of
semen are there?

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And let us count the
ways it gets around.

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Here, I say, is a wound
to compare and contrast

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to no other.

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Here is a little piece
of culture on a swab.

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Look under the microscope
and see this culture growing

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like a scream in this dish.

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This red mouth, this is
culture's test of manhood,

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of womanhood.

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And this outrage
I force into essay

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form so you can write
out what we really know.

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