She Speaks

        In the United States a woman
        is beaten by a man every 18 seconds,
        interrupted every two.

It’s not as if she never speaks.
Her words fly from her
to the treetops, there whispering.

It’s not as if she never speaks.
Like the timid touch of a beaten woman
her words shake, desire

to be heard, to be known.

The synapse between a woman’s thought
and words attempted—interrupted—
pulses with a palpable heat.

What becomes of a man
who denies a woman
the power of words?

What becomes of a race
that abuses the words
of half its human face?

We have poems
we will never know—

it is our voice that is denied.

***
It’s not as if she never spoke.
Her words linger when her voice
is gone—beckoned
by the muse that listens
to dry leaves rustling in the wind.

Jenny Root