ADVENT DAY 6 * LINDSAY TURNER!

SONG OF THE MEN

In a field of flowered grains

many men held guns

or cameras making tiny flowered

pictures on the screen.  

The sun was shining on the beach

and some men were looking

at bodies drying in the sun,

slivered into living.

And on the street the man

stopped me and said, I need

to see you; when I come up to you

like this, you should be used

to this. Now in a suburb close at hand

their eyes are orange like suns

and when they shine on what they need

“no man should be embarrassed.”

Lindsay Turner

LINDSAY TURNER'S poems, criticism, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Lana Turner Journal, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, WebConjunctions, FIELD, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.  She's a PhD candidate in English at the University of Virginia and lives wherever she can.

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.