This Is Not Another Poem About Male Violence
by Katie Robinson
Or at least, I don’t want it to be.
It’s just that I’ve been thinking about J,
standing inches from my face
in the hallway of my dorm room,
saying isn’t it funny how small women are,
how frail. Funny, he says,
how if he wanted to, he could break our necks
like that, then snaps his fingers, laughs.
He is a doctor now. I think of that.
Of all the women coming to his office for help,
and how he thinks about snapping their necks.
Katie Robinson is an incoming fiction MFA candidate at Boston University and the social media editor at Electric Literature. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Grist, Electric Literature, Rejection Letters, Autofocus and elsewhere. She has attended Tin House Workshop and Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is currently at work on a novel and collection of short stories, and you can find her on twitter @katie_a_rob.