ADVENT DAY 22 * MYTILI JAGANNATHAN!

TRAINING

means:     you have a master

means    they tell you

your fate       your job

the position of

your body

and the means by which

they’ll use it

training

means:     there’s eight

of them and one of you

taking their turns

in a house where

no one’s coming

home for thirteen

hours      means

your age is thirteen

and eight years of

school didn’t

warn you

there’s really only

one lesson

for a girl

they call it:        training

say:    we ran a train

on her      they say

we trained her

and

after that she was

not the same

they’re careful

not to use

your name

think they

know what they’re

training you     for

but you’re quiet

trying to

breathe

learning

another lesson

what you

have to do

what you have to

do to kill

the other

what you have to do

to kill the other:

what you have to do

MYTILI JAGANNATHAN makes poems that investigate public and private space, power, gender, property, desire, collectivity, and the conditions of speech. She is the author of Acts, a chapbook from Habenicht Press; and her poems have appeared in Sous Rature, EOAGH, Rattapallax, Mirage#4/Period[ical], Combo, Fanzine, Interlope, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, and Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. She collaborated with filmmaker Sara Zia Ebrahimi and musician Gralin Hughes on Up Against, a 5-minute film screened as part of the “Shelter” episode of the Termite TV Collective. Her writing has been recognized by a grant from the Leeway Foundation and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. 

Curatorial note: The following poems are a response to a call for poetry about 

rape culture for the annual Delirious Advent Feature; the call is in turn an 

immediate response to the Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” about rape 

culture at the University of Virginia. However, they are also part of a larger 

conversation about rape in poetry communities. Curated by Jessica Smith and 

Susana Gardner.