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Poetry on Trauma
Art makes us whole.
The impulse to make art, to write poems, for some people, comes from a need to create order out of the chaos of existence. We crave order, and find it beautiful.
Writing poetry in response to trauma can help to make sense out of the insensible. In writing the poem, the person who has experienced the trauma takes control of it, shaping pain or shame or betrayal into a form of their own choosing.
The poem below, originally published in Underground Voices, was one of my attempts to take control of a story that I’d once been powerless to stop.
Seven to Life
Why did I stay? His hands, like carved white pine,
touched my swollen face, and it was better
than no touch at all. It was never good.
The day we met, I chased a starling from my window
to the open air, it left small black feathers
pasted on the frame. We had both read Dostoevsky,
both suffered beatings from those that we adored,
and didn’t we believe that suffering purifies
the soul? Northcountry winters kill all that’s weak
and inessential — — split limbs of tamaracks, warblers
