You know the women through every manmade thing
that men have used to trap them: a van’s double doors
closing: a keyboard: letters lined up like crows
on telephone wires: barbs on a fence: a door that opens
to a queue of men: at night stepping onto a white bus:
that moment on the edge of what is about to happen.
In a cell, they choose between sex or jail: the cop car
where they apologize: thank you, Sir, thank you for not
booking me tonight: the papers they sign from hospital
gurneys: or the shiny, blue cellphone light that hooks
them onscreen like tiny, pink fish. Punch a hole
in the glass: cracks spidering: ice too thin to carry
the weight of men: one eye to the gap just
open enough for you to read their names.