Date Rape Actress
“You’re just an empty cage, girl,
If you kill the bird”
– Tori Amos, “Crucify”
At sixteen, she felt it
when the man gave her
moonshine: that slowing
of blood, strange feeling
of floating out.
And so she became a bird,
buoyed, looking upon the body;
saw it groped, kissed,
discarded, propped against
a tree, mindless, poisoned.
The body, thawing, rocked
back and forth ’til morning, when,
the vomit drying on its lips,
it slept, and drooled,
and didn’t dream.
How to Be a Woman
Accept now that you are always wrong.
If a man hits on you at a party,
it must be your fault.
If he puts something in your drink,
you should have paid
more attention.
If something worse happens –
if the man begins to touch
your breasts while you lean
against a bathroom sink
and vomit in the dark,
if he does this and doesn’t stop,
and his friends are there
to watch, and no one
moves because they don’t
know what to do,
when this happens –
and it will –
then of course it is your fault
and they were right,
they were right,
you should have never left
the house that night. This never
would have happened
had you stayed
home.
Andrea Rogers is a poet, musician, and postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, wher
e she teaches writing. She is the recipient of the 2015 Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival Poetry Prize, judged by Tracy K. Smith, and two Academy of American Poets awards. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, The Adirondack Review, American Journal of Poetry, District Lit, Atticus Review, and anthologies by Black Lawrence Press, Negative Capability, and Red Paint Hill. She and her band, Night Driving in Small Towns, have been featured by Rolling Stone and NPR.