(Judges 19) Remembering the Concubine

By Emma Goldman-Sherman

After being done to by the pack of men
after she collapsed at the threshold of the old man’s shack
after her master discovered her there unresponsive
he cut her up with his sharpened axe
not for nothing, not for hate, to get everyone’s attention
crying the way men cry when they do something brutal.

He cleaved her parts to send them out in hemp-woven sacks
dripping and stinking his petition, a missive to the leaders
and her rotten pieces spoke.

I hear her singing, her body in 12 parts
a music to force a response in each of 12 tribes
who replied with war, small punishment for blame.
They could have done much more
offered care, compassion, yes, new ways
to be men, what I want for my sons
and if my father still lived.

Let her body be remembered
that her neck might lift her head
again, her throat might breathe fresh
breeze her hands unclench and connect
to her unbroken wrists, and let her elbows
meet her arms to fold across
her newly expanding ribs. Recage
her softer organs to claim her heart’s
own vanished song as her feet re-ally
with her ankles, her knees reborn, her thighs
arise uncrushed as if nothing had ever gone
wrong. And let her hips sway freely untorn.

Emma Goldman-Sherman (she/they) is an invisibly disabled, chronically ill, autistic, gender dysphoric, queer, feminist poet and survivor. They support writers and artists at www.BraveSpace.online. Their plays have been produced on four continents and published by Brooklyn Publishers, Next Stage, Applause and Smith & Kraus. Their podcasts are available at TheParsnipShip.com and PlayingonAir.org, and are forthcoming from EmptyRoomRadio.com. Emma has an MFA from University of Iowa, where they helped organize a union for Research and Teaching Assistants. Emma is currently the playwright in residence at Experimental Bitch. Their poetry has been published at Oberon, American Athenaeum, Queerlings, Chaotic Merge, The Nasty Womens Poetry Anthology and others. Learn more at newplayexchange.org.

Image credit: “The Israelite Discovers his Concubine, Dead on his Doorstep,” by Gustave Doré, Circa 1880.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.